Graphene Whisperitronics: Transducing Whispering Gallery Modes into Electronic Transport

Nano Letters, vol. 22, pp. 128–134

Abstract

When confined in circular cavities, graphene relativistic charge carriers occupy whispering gallery modes (WGMs) in analogy to classical acoustic and optical fields. The rich geometrical patterns of the WGMs decorating the local density of states offer promising perspectives to devise new disruptive quantum devices. However, exploiting these highly sensitive resonances requires the transduction of the WGMs to the outside world through source and drain electrodes, a yet unreported configuration. Here, we create a circular p-n island in a graphene device using a polarized scanning gate microscope tip and probe the resulting WGM signatures in in-plane electronic transport through the p-n island. Combining tight-binding simulations and the exact solution of the Dirac equation, we assign the measured device conductance features to WGMs and demonstrate mode selectivity by displacing the p-n island with respect to a constriction. This work therefore constitutes a proof of concept for graphene whisperitronic devices.

Authors 8

1. Boris Brun corresponding

   UCLouvain

   Affiliation as printed

   IMCN/NAPS & MODL, Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain), B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

2. Việt Hùng Nguyễn

   UCLouvain

   Affiliation as printed

   IMCN/NAPS & MODL, Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain), B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

3. Sowmya Somanchi Aachen JARA-FIT and 2nd Institute of Physics

   Forschungszentrum Jülich · Jülich Aachen Research Alliance · RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   JARA-FIT and 2nd Institute of Physics, RWTH Aachen University, 52062 Aachen, Germany

   Peter Grünberg Institute (PGI-9), Forschungszentrum Jülich, 52425 Jülich, Germany

4. Kenji Watanabe

   National Institute for Materials Science

   Affiliation as printed

   Research Center for Functional Materials, National Institute for Materials Science, 1-1 Namiki, Tsukuba 305-0044, Japan

5. Takashi Taniguchi

   National Institute for Materials Science

   Affiliation as printed

   International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics, National Institute for Materials Science, 1-1 Namiki, Tsukuba 305-0044, Japan

6. Jean‐Christophe Charlier

   UCLouvain

   Affiliation as printed

   IMCN/NAPS & MODL, Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain), B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

7. Christoph Stampfer Aachen JARA-FIT and 2nd Institute of Physics

   Forschungszentrum Jülich · Jülich Aachen Research Alliance · RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   JARA-FIT and 2nd Institute of Physics, RWTH Aachen University, 52062 Aachen, Germany

   Peter Grünberg Institute (PGI-9), Forschungszentrum Jülich, 52425 Jülich, Germany

8. Benoit Hackens corresponding

   UCLouvain

   Affiliation as printed

   IMCN/NAPS & MODL, Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain), B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium