Thermoelectric Power in Bilayer Graphene Device with Ionic Liquid Gating

Abstract

The quest for materials showing large thermoelectric power has long been one of the important subjects in material science and technology. Such materials have great potential for thermoelectric cooling and also high figure of merit ZT thermoelectric applications. We have fabricated bilayer graphene devices with ionic-liquid gating in order to tune its band gap via application of a perpendicular electric field on a bilayer graphene. By keeping the Fermi level at charge neutral point during the cool-down, we found that the charge puddles effect can be greatly reduced and thus largely improve the transport properties at low T in graphene-based devices using ionic liquid gating. At (V ig, V bg) = ('1 V, +23 V), a band gap of about 36.6 ± 3 meV forms, and a nearly 40% enhancement of thermoelectric power at T = 120 K is clearly observed. Our works demonstrate the feasibility of band gap tuning in a bilayer graphene using ionic liquid gating. We also remark on the significant influence of the charge puddles effect in ionic-liquid-based devices.