Surface Polar Phonon Dominated Electron Transport in Graphene

TL;DR

This study uses Monte Carlo simulations to analyze how surface polar phonons from different substrates affect electron mobility and resistivity in graphene, revealing significant impacts on transport properties.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the role of surface polar phonons on graphene's electronic transport, highlighting substrate-specific effects and implications for device performance.

Findings

Surface polar phonons reduce low-field electron mobility.

Saturation velocity degradation is substrate-dependent.

Surface polar phonons influence resistivity even at low temperatures.

Abstract

The effects of surface polar phonons on electronic transport properties of monolayer graphene are studied by using a Monte Carlo simulation. Specifically, the low-field electron mobility and saturation velocity are examined for different substrates (SiC, SiO2, and HfO2) in comparison to the intrinsic case. While the results show that the low-field mobility can be substantially reduced by the introduction of surface polar phonon scattering, corresponding degradation of the saturation velocity is not observed for all three substrates at room temperature. It is also found that surface polar phonons can influence graphene electrical resistivity even at low temperature, leading potentially to inaccurate estimation of the acoustic phonon deformation potential constant.