Raman Spectroscopy of Electrochemically-Gated Graphene Transistors: Geometrical Capacitance, Electron-Phonon, Electron-Electron, and Electron-Defect Scattering

TL;DR

This study uses micro-Raman spectroscopy to analyze electrochemically-gated graphene transistors, accurately determining capacitance, electron-phonon interactions, defect creation, and doping effects, providing new insights into scattering mechanisms and phonon behavior.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive quantitative analysis of electron-phonon and electron-defect interactions in graphene using Raman spectroscopy, including new measurements of coupling constants and defect effects.

Findings

Electron-phonon coupling at Γ is five times weaker than at K points.

Electrochemical reactions can create defects up to 1.4×10^{12} cm^{-2}.

Doping effects on Raman features are unaffected by defect concentrations.

Abstract

We report a comprehensive micro-Raman scattering study of electrochemically-gated graphene field-effect transistors. The geometrical capacitance of the electrochemical top-gates is accurately determined from dual-gated Raman measurements, allowing a quantitative analysis of the frequency, linewidth and integrated intensity of the main Raman features of graphene. The anomalous behavior observed for the G-mode phonon is in very good agreement with theoretical predictions and provides a measurement of the electron-phonon coupling constant for zone-center ($\Gamma$ point) optical phonons. In addition, the decrease of the integrated intensity of the 2D-mode feature with increasing doping, makes it possible to determine the electron-phonon coupling constant for near zone-edge (K and K' points) optical phonons. We find that the electron-phonon coupling strength at $\Gamma$ is five times weaker than at K (K'), in very good agreement with a direct measurement of the ratio of the integrated intensities of the resonant intra- (2D') and inter-valley (2D) Raman features. We also show that electrochemical reactions, occurring at large gate biases, can be harnessed to efficiently create defects in graphene, with concentrations up to approximately $1.4\times 10^{12}~\rm cm^{-2}$. At such defect concentrations, we estimate that the electron-defect scattering rate remains much smaller than the electron-phonon scattering rate. The evolution of the G- and 2D-mode features upon doping remain unaffected by the presence of defects and the doping dependence of the D mode closely follows that of its two-phonon (2D mode) overtone. Finally, the linewidth and frequency of the G-mode phonon as well as the frequencies of the G- and 2D-mode phonons in doped graphene follow sample-independent correlations that can be utilized for accurate estimations of the charge carrier density.