(Invited) Graphene Plasmons: Properties and Applications

Abstract

After a short introduction to the single particle excitations of graphene, I will focus on the collective excitations (plasmons) of this material [1,2]. The properties of graphene plasmons, will be compared with those of the surface plasmons of conventional metals concentrating mainly on localized plasmons in lithographically patterned nano- and micro-structures (quantum dots and ribbons) [2-7]. I will discuss their optical behavior in the infrared and THz regions of the spectrum, size effects, doping effects, effects of external magnetic fields, and the hybridization of the graphene plasmons with substrate and adsorbed overlayer optical phonons and the plasmon damping mechanisms [3,6,7,11]. Applications of graphene plasmons in passive THz optical elements, the enhancement of photocurrents in graphene infrared photodetectors [8-10], and the enhancement of infrared absorption spectra of molecules and deposited thin dielectric films [11-13] will be discussed. [1] Grigorenko, A.N.; Polini, M; Novoselov, K.S., Nat. Photonics 6, 749 (2012). [2] Low, T.; Avouris, Ph. ACS Nano 8, 1086 (2014). [3] Yan, H.; et al. Nat. Nanotechnol. 7, 330 (2012). [3] Yan, H.; et al. Nat. Photonics 7, 394 (2013). [5] Freitag, M.; Low, T.; Xia, F.; Avouris, Ph. Nat. Photonics 7, 53 (2011). [6] Yan, H. et al. Nano Lett. 14, 4581 (2014). [7] Low, T. et al.; Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 116801 (2014). [8] Freitag, M; et al. ACS Nano (2014), DOI: 10.1021/nn502822z [9] Freitag, M.; et al. Nat. Commun. 4, 1951 (2013). [10] Avouris, Ph., Freitag, M., IEEE J. Topics in Quantum Electronics, 20, 6000112 (2014). [11] Li, Y. et al.; Nano Lett. 14, 1573 (2014). [12] Freitag, M; et al. ACS Nano 8, 8350 (2014). [13] Wang, H.; et al. to be published.