title: 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-WSe2-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 WSe2 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.
authors.affiliation: ICFO-Institut de Ciencies Fotoniques, The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Castelldefels, Barcelona 08860, Spain.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Massicotte
authors.affiliation: ICFO-Institut de Ciencies Fotoniques, The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Castelldefels, Barcelona 08860, Spain.
authors.forename: P
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-6253-3190
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Schmidt
authors.affiliation: ICFO-Institut de Ciencies Fotoniques, The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Castelldefels, Barcelona 08860, Spain.
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Vialla
authors.affiliation: National Institute for Materials Science, 1-1 Namiki, Tsukuba 305-0044, Japan.
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Watanabe
authors.affiliation: National Institute for Materials Science, 1-1 Namiki, Tsukuba 305-0044, Japan.
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Taniguchi
authors.affiliation: ICFO-Institut de Ciencies Fotoniques, The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Castelldefels, Barcelona 08860, Spain.
authors.forename: K J
authors.initials: KJ
authors.lastname: Tielrooij
authors.affiliation: ICFO-Institut de Ciencies Fotoniques, The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Castelldefels, Barcelona 08860, Spain.|ICREA-Institució Catalana de Recerça i Estudis Avancats, Barcelona 08010, Spain.
authors.forename: F H L
authors.initials: FH
authors.lastname: Koppens