Optical transmittance of multilayer graphene

TL;DR

This study investigates how the optical transmittance of multilayer graphene depends on the number of layers, demonstrating that transmittance measurements are a reliable method for layer determination and applicable to other 2D materials.

Contribution

The paper combines large-scale tight-binding simulations with optical measurements to establish transmittance as a reliable indicator of layer number in multilayer graphene.

Findings

Optical transmittance depends solely on the number of graphene layers.

Transmittance measurement is more reliable than Raman spectroscopy for layer determination.

Method applicable to other weakly interacting 2D materials.

Abstract

We study the optical transmittance of multilayer graphene films up to 65 layers thick. By combing large-scale tight-binding simulation and optical measurement on CVD multilayer graphene, the optical transmission through graphene films in the visible region is found to be solely determined by the number of graphene layers. We argue that the optical transmittance measurement is more reliable in the determination of the number of layers than the commonly used Raman Spectroscopy. Moreover, optical transmittance measurement can be applied also to other 2D materials with weak van der Waals interlayer interaction.