Optoelectronic and electronic applications of graphene

Graphene is expected to have a significant impact in various fields in the foreseeable future. For example, graphene is considered to be a promising candidate to replace indium tin oxide (ITO) as transparent conductive electrodes in optoelectronics applications. We report the tunability of the wavelength of localized surface plasmon resonance by varying the distance between graphene and Au nanoparticles [1]. It is estimated that every nanometer of change in the distance between graphene and the nanoparticles corresponds to a resonance wavelength shift of ~12 nm. The nanoparticle-graphene separation changes the coupling strength of the electromagnetic field of the excited plasmons in the nanoparticles and the antiparallel image dipoles in graphene. We also show a hysteresis in the conductance and capacitance can serve as a platform for graphene memory devices. We report the hysteresis in capacitance-voltage measurements on top gated bilayer graphene which provide a direct experimental evidence of the existence of charge traps as the cause for the hysteresis [2]. By applying a back gate bias to tune the Fermi level, an opposite sequence of switching with the different charge carriers, holes and electrons, is found [3]. The charging and discharging effect is proposed to explain this ambipolar bistable hysteretic switching.