Optoelectronic properties of ABC‐stacked trilayer graphene

Abstract

AbstractWe present a theoretical study on the optoelectronic properties of ABC‐stacked trilayer graphene (TLG). The optical conductance and light transmittance are evaluated through using the energy‐balance equation derived from the Boltzmann equation for an air/graphene/dielectric‐wafer system in the presence of linearly polarized radiation field. The results obtained from two band structure models are examined and compared. For short wavelength radiation, the universal optical conductance $\sigma _{0} = 3e^{2} /(4\hbar )$ can be obtained. Importantly, there exists an optical absorption window in the radiation wavelength range 10–200 µm, which is induced by different transition energies required for inter‐ and intra‐band optical absorption channels. As a result, we find that the position and width of this window depend sensitively on temperature and carrier density of the system, especially the lower frequency edge. There is a small characteristic absorption peak at about 82 µm where the largest interband transition states exist in the ABC‐stacked TLG model, in contrast to the relatively smooth curves in a simplified model. These theoretical results indicate that TLG has some interesting and important physical properties which can be utilized to realize infrared or THz optoelectronic devices.