Faculty & Staff Research

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This community includes faculty journal articles deposited per Rice's Open Access Policy (more information about the policy can be found in this library guide) and additional faculty work. Items found in this community can also be found in the authors' departmental faculty publication collections.

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Browsing Faculty & Staff Research by Subject "2D materials"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Carbon Nanotubes and Related Nanomaterials: Critical Advances and Challenges for Synthesis toward Mainstream Commercial Applications
    (American Chemical Society, 2018) Rao, Rahul; Pint, Cary L.; Islam, Ahmad E.; Weatherup, Robert S.; Hofmann, Stephan; Meshot, Eric R.; Wu, Fanqi; Zhou, Chongwu; Dee, Nicholas; Amama, Placidus B.; Carpena-Nuñez, Jennifer; Shi, Wenbo; Plata, Desiree L.; Penev, Evgeni S.; Yakobson, Boris I.; Balbuena, Perla B.; Bichara, Christophe; Futaba, Don N.; Noda, Suguru; Shin, Homin; Kim, Keun Su; Simard, Benoit; Mirri, Francesca; Pasquali, Matteo; Fornasiero, Francesco; Kauppinen, Esko I.; Arnold, Michael; Cola, Baratunde A.; Nikolaev, Pavel; Arepalli, Sivaram; Cheng, Hui-Ming; Zakharov, Dmitri N.; Stach, Eric A.; Zhang, Jin; Wei, Fei; Terrones, Mauricio; Geohegan, David B.; Maruyama, Benji; Maruyama, Shigeo; Li, Yan; Adams, W. Wade; Hart, A. John
    Advances in the synthesis and scalable manufacturing of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) remain critical to realizing many important commercial applications. Here we review recent breakthroughs in the synthesis of SWCNTs and highlight key ongoing research areas and challenges. A few key applications that capitalize on the properties of SWCNTs are also reviewed with respect to the recent synthesis breakthroughs and ways in which synthesis science can enable advances in these applications. While the primary focus of this review is on the science framework of SWCNT growth, we draw connections to mechanisms underlying the synthesis of other 1D and 2D materials such as boron nitride nanotubes and graphene.
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    Electric Double Layer Field-Effect Transistors Using Two-Dimensional (2D) Layers of Copper Indium Selenide (CuIn7Se11)
    (MDPI, 2019) Patil, Prasanna D.; Ghosh, Sujoy; Wasala, Milinda; Lei, Sidong; Vajtai, Robert; Ajayan, Pulickel M.; Talapatra, Saikat
    Innovations in the design of field-effect transistor (FET) devices will be the key to future application development related to ultrathin and low-power device technologies. In order to boost the current semiconductor device industry, new device architectures based on novel materials and system need to be envisioned. Here we report the fabrication of electric double layer field-effect transistors (EDL-FET) with two-dimensional (2D) layers of copper indium selenide (CuIn7Se11) as the channel material and an ionic liquid electrolyte (1-Butyl-3-methylimidazolium hexafluorophosphate (BMIM-PF6)) as the gate terminal. We found one order of magnitude improvement in the on-off ratio, a five- to six-times increase in the field-effect mobility, and two orders of magnitude in the improvement in the subthreshold swing for ionic liquid gated devices as compared to silicon dioxide (SiO2) back gates. We also show that the performance of EDL-FETs can be enhanced by operating them under dual (top and back) gate conditions. Our investigations suggest that the performance of CuIn7Se11 FETs can be significantly improved when BMIM-PF6 is used as a top gate material (in both single and dual gate geometry) instead of the conventional dielectric layer of the SiO2 gate. These investigations show the potential of 2D material-based EDL-FETs in developing active components of future electronics needed for low-power applications.
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    Graphene Photonic Devices for Terahertz and Mid-Infrared
    (2013-11-08) Gao, Weilu; Xu, Qianfan; Kono, Junichiro; Mittleman, Daniel M.
    Graphene and other strictly two-dimensional materials are the rising stars on the horizon of material science, condensed matter physics and engineering. The richness of optical and electronic properties of graphene attract much interest due to the exceptional high crystal and electronic quality resulting in large carrier mobility at room temperature and easily electrical control of carrier density, which find its true potential in photonics and optoelectronics. Novel graphene based broadband modulators, polarizer, active plasmonic resonators, ultra-fast lasers and etc are proposed and implemented in many literatures. Despite ample demonstrations of the true potential of graphene in optoelectronic devices, there is still unexplored region. In this thesis, we investigate the graphene photonic properties and optoelectronic devices in different regions ranging from longer wavelength terahertz frequency (THz) to shorter wavelength telecommunication frequency to reveal the whole picture of graphene. The Drude-like intraband absorptoion (i.e. free carrier effect) in graphene plays an important role in THz region. However, the extinction ratio that can be obtained when THz waves passing through a single layer graphene is limited due to its one-atomic-layer thickness and the non-resonant nature of the intraband absorption. By incorporating resonate structures with graphene, the high extinction ratio of THz wave transmission will be achieved utilizing the high localized electric field near the graphene layer. Combining the electrically controlled carrier density in graphene, a graphene-based THz modulators with high modulation depth, fast speed can be built. High carrier mobility of graphene at room temperature makes it a new platform for plasmonics with strong light-matter interactions, which has been theoretically proved to be able to support surface plasmon polarions (SPPs) with lower loss and higher mode confinement compared with metals. Furthermore, the electrically controlled carrier density of graphene renders it new possibility to build active plasmonic devices. Although many efforts have been done by either shaping the graphene to excite localized plamons or using near-field method to excite SPPs in continuous graphene layer in spite of low efficiency, we theoretically propose and experimentally demonstrate to utilize silicon diffractive gratings underneath the graphene to excite graphene SPPs, which can be actively controlled via back-gating structure. The ac carrier dynamics of graphene have different contribution at different frequency range, which are investigated by incorporating graphene with resonators operating at different frequencies. In mid-infrared region the same structure as that in THz region is integrated with graphene that proves the almost complete transparency of graphene in mid-infrared region for intrinsically doping graphene while in the shorter wavelength of telecommnucations frequency, graphene is also integrated with silicon ring resonators, which shows large absorption. However, this large absorption is resulted from interband absorption that is quite different from what we have observed in THz region that is from intraband absorption. So in summary, the intraband and interband carrier dynamics of graphene will have different contributions in devices operating at different frequency region, which makes the various applications available.
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    Nanoantenna-Enhanced Light-Matter Interaction in Atomically Thin WS2
    (American Chemical Society, 2015) Kern, Johannes; Trügler, Andreas; Niehues, Iris; Ewering, Johannes; Schmidt, Robert; Schneider, Robert; Najmaei, Sina; George, Antony; Zhang, Jing; Lou, Jun; Hohenester, Ulrich; de Vasconcellos, Steffen Michaelis; Bratschitsch, Rudolf
    Atomically thin transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) are an emerging class of two-dimensional semiconductors. Recently, the first optoelectronic devices featuring photodetection as well as electroluminescence have been demonstrated using monolayer TMDCs as active material. However, the lightﾖmatter coupling for atomically thin TMDCs is limited by their small absorption length and low photoluminescence quantum yield. Here, we significantly increase the lightﾖmatter interaction in monolayer tungsten disulfide (WS2) by coupling the atomically thin semiconductor to a plasmonic nanoantenna. Due to the plasmon resonance of the nanoantenna, strongly enhanced optical near-fields are generated within the WS2ﾠmonolayer. We observe an increase in photoluminescence intensity by more than 1 order of magnitude, resulting from a combined absorption and emission enhancement of the exciton in the WS2monolayer. The polarization characteristics of the coupled system are governed by the nanoantenna. The robust nanoantennaﾖmonolayer hybrid paves the way for efficient photodetectors, solar cells, and light-emitting devices based on two-dimensional materials.