Electrically-driven ultrafast out-of-equilibrium light emission from hot electrons in suspended graphene/hBN heterostructures

Qiang Liu; Wei Xu; Xiaoxi Li; Tongyao Zhang; Chengbing Qin; Fang Luo; Zhihong Zhu; Shiqiao Qin; Mengjian Zhu; Kostya S Novoselov

doi:10.1088/2631-7990/acfbc2

Nanoscale light sources with high speed of electrical modulation and low energy consumption are key components for nanophotonics and optoelectronics. The record-high carrier mobility and ultrafast carrier dynamics of graphene make it promising as an atomically thin light emitter, which can be further integrated into arbitrary platforms by van der Waals forces. However, due to the zero bandgap, graphene is difficult to emit light through the interband recombination of carriers like conventional semiconductors. Here, we demonstrate ultrafast thermal light emitters based on suspended graphene/hexagonal boron nitride (Gr/hBN) heterostructures. Electrons in biased graphene are significantly heated up to 2800 K at modest electric fields, emitting bright photons from the near-infrared to the visible spectral range. By eliminating the heat dissipation channel of the substrate, the radiation efficiency of the suspended Gr/hBN device is about two orders of magnitude greater than that of graphene devices supported on SiO₂ or hBN. We further demonstrate that hot electrons and low-energy acoustic phonons in graphene are weakly coupled to each other and are not in full thermal equilibrium. Direct cooling of high-temperature hot electrons to low-temperature acoustic phonons is enabled by the significant near-field heat transfer at the highly localized Gr/hBN interface, resulting in ultrafast thermal emission with up to 1 GHz bandwidth under electrical excitation. It is found that suspending the Gr/hBN heterostructures on the SiO₂ trenches significantly modifies the light emission due to the formation of the optical cavity and showed a ~440% enhancement in intensity at the peak wavelength of 940 nm compared to the black-body thermal radiation. The demonstration of electrically driven ultrafast light emission from suspended Gr/hBN heterostructures sheds the light on applications of graphene heterostructures in photonic integrated circuits, such as broadband light sources and ultrafast thermo-optic phase modulators.

Electrically-driven ultrafast out-of-equilibrium light emission from hot electrons in suspended graphene/hBN heterostructures

1 College of Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies&Hunan Provincial Key Laboratory of Novel Nano-optoelectronic Information Materials and Devices, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, Hunan 410073, People's Republic of China;

2 Nanhu Laser Laboratory, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha, Hunan 410073, People's Republic of China;

3 State Key Laboratory of Quantum Optics and Quantum Optics Devices, Institute of Opto-Electronics, Shanxi University, Taiyuan 030006, People's Republic of China;

4 Collaborative Innovation Center of Extreme Optics, Shanxi University, Taiyuan 030006, People's Republic of China;

5 State Key Laboratory of Quantum Optics and Quantum Optics Devices, Institute of Laser Spectroscopy, Shanxi University, Taiyuan 030006, People's Republic of China;

6 Institute for Functional Intelligent Materials, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117544, Singapore;

7 Department of Materials Science and Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117575, Singapore

Publish Date: 2023-10-23

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Electrically-driven ultrafast out-of-equilibrium light emission from hot electrons in suspended graphene/hBN heterostructures

doi: 10.1088/2631-7990/acfbc2

Abstract

Keywords

通讯作者: 陈斌, bchen63@163.com

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