Temperature-dependent resistivity of suspended graphene

TL;DR

This study analyzes how electron-phonon interactions, including flexural and in-plane phonons, influence the temperature-dependent resistivity of suspended graphene, highlighting the effects of tension and coupling mechanisms.

Contribution

It provides a detailed theoretical analysis of electron-phonon contributions to graphene's resistivity across temperature regimes, considering tension effects and different phonon couplings.

Findings

Flexural phonons dominate resistivity without tension, with T^{5/2} and T^{2} dependencies at low and high T.

Tension suppresses flexural phonon effects, leading to linear T dependence from in-plane phonons.

Results align with recent experimental observations.

Abstract

In this paper we investigate the electron-phonon contribution to the resistivity of suspended single layer graphene. In-plane as well as flexural phonons are addressed in different temperature regimes. We focus on the intrinsic electron-phonon coupling due to the interaction of electrons with elastic deformations in the graphene membrane. The competition between screened deformation potential vs fictitious gauge field coupling is discussed, together with the role of tension in the suspended flake. In the absence of tension, flexural phonons dominate the phonon contribution to the resistivity at any temperature $T$ with a $T^{5/2}_{}$ and $T^{2}_{}$ dependence at low and high temperatures, respectively. Sample-specific tension suppresses the contribution due to flexural phonons, yielding a linear temperature dependence due to in-plane modes. We compare our results with recent experiments.