Photo-Nernst detection of cyclotron resonance in partially irradiated graphene

Abstract

Cyclotron resonance of a Landau-quantized graphene can absorb a significant amount of infrared light. However, the application of this phenomenon to the photodetector had been limited due to the lack of efficient photon to the charge conversion scheme. Here, we demonstrate the detection of cyclotron resonance in a partially metal-masked monolayer graphene two-terminal device using the photo-Nernst effect. Due to the presence of the mask, incident infrared light is irradiated on only one-half of the graphene channel. This partial irradiation creates a temperature gradient perpendicular to the graphene channel. In the presence of an external magnetic field, thermopower is generated perpendicular to the temperature gradient due to the Nernst effect. Consequently, photo-Nernst voltage is generated along the graphene channel, which can be detected from the contacts on both ends of the channel. We demonstrate selective detection of the photo-Nernst effect while minimizing the other photovoltaic contributions, such as the photo-Seebeck effect. We investigate the dependence of the photo-Nernst effect on the magnetic field and excitation wavelength, which reveals a significant enhancement of the photo-Nernst signal at the cyclotron resonance conditions in graphene. Our finding could facilitate the realization of a far-infrared light detector using cyclotron resonance of graphene.