Transport in suspended graphene

TL;DR

This paper provides a theoretical analysis of transport in suspended graphene, showing how impurity removal and impurity concentration affect mobility and conductivity, aligning with recent high-mobility experimental results.

Contribution

The study offers a theoretical framework explaining high mobility in suspended graphene and constrains impurity parameters based on experimental data.

Findings

Removing the substrate increases mobility due to fewer charged impurities.

Minimum conductivity depends on impurity concentration, not universal.

Experiments suggest residual impurity density of 1-2 x 10^{10} cm^{-2} in suspended graphene.

Abstract

Motivated by recent experiments on suspended graphene showing carrier mobilities as high as 200,000 cm^2/Vs, we theoretically calculate transport properties assuming Coulomb impurities as the dominant scattering mechanism. We argue that the substrate-free experiments done in the diffusive regime are consistent with our theory and verify many of our earlier predictions including (i) removal of the substrate will increase mobility since most of the charged impurities are in the substrate, (ii) the minimum conductivity is not universal, but depends on impurity concentration with cleaner samples having a higher minimum conductivity. We further argue that experiments on suspended graphene put strong constraints on the two parameters involved in our theory, namely, the charged impurity concentration n_imp and d, the typical distance of a charged impurity from the graphene sheet. The recent experiments on suspended graphene indicate a residual impurity density of 1-2 \times 10^{10} cm^{-2} which are presumably stuck to the graphene interface, compared to impurity densities of ~10^{12} cm^{-2} for graphene on SiO_2 substrate. Transport experiments can therefore be used as a spectroscopic tool to identify the properties of the remaining impurities in suspended graphene.