Photo-thermionic effect in vertical graphene heterostructures

Abstract

Finding alternative optoelectronic mechanisms that overcome the limitations of conventional semiconductor devices is paramount for detecting and harvesting low-energy photons. A highly promising approach is to drive a current from the thermal energy added to the free-electron bath as a result of light absorption. Successful implementation of this strategy requires a broadband absorber where carriers interact among themselves more strongly than with phonons, as well as energy-selective contacts to extract the excess electronic heat. Here we show that graphene-WSe 2-graphene heterostructure devices offer this possibility through the photo-thermionic effect: the absorbed photon energy in graphene is efficiently transferred to the electron bath leading to a thermalized hot carrier distribution. Carriers with energy higher than the Schottky barrier between graphene and WSe 2 can be emitted over the barrier, thus creating photocurrent. We experimentally demonstrate that the photo-thermionic effect enables detection of sub-bandgap photons, while being size-scalable, electrically tunable, broadband and ultrafast.