Nonlinear photocurrents in two-dimensional systems based on graphene and boron nitride

TL;DR

This paper investigates the nonlinear photogalvanic effect in 2D materials like graphene and boron nitride, revealing how their intrinsic responses depend on topological properties, excitonic effects, and external tuning, with potential for optoelectronic applications.

Contribution

It provides a microscopic analysis of the nonlinear photocurrent in 2D materials, incorporating Coulomb interactions and excitonic effects, and demonstrates tunability of the photocurrent's magnitude and polarity.

Findings

Photocurrents range from pA to nA per cm/W in these materials.

Excitonic effects significantly modify the photoconductivity spectrum.

Biased bilayer graphene shows high tunability of photocurrent magnitude and polarity.

Abstract

DC photoelectrical currents can be generated purely as a non-linear effect in uniform media lacking inversion symmetry without the need for a material junction or bias voltages to drive it, in what is termed photogalvanic effect. These currents are strongly dependent on the polarization state of the radiation, as well as on topological properties of the underlying Fermi surface such as its Berry curvature. In order to study the intrinsic photogalvanic response of gapped graphene (GG), biased bilayer graphene (BBG), and hexagonal boron nitride (hBN), we compute the non-linear current using a perturbative expansion of the density matrix. This allows a microscopic description of the quadratic response to an electromagnetic field in these materials, which we analyze as a function of temperature and electron density. We find that the intrinsic response is robust across these systems and allows for currents in the range of pA cm/W to nA cm/W. At the independent-particle level, the response of hBN-based structures is significant only in the ultra-violet due to their sizeable band-gap. However, when Coulomb interactions are accounted for by explicit solution of the Bethe-Salpeter equation, we find that the photoconductivity is strongly modified by transitions involving exciton levels in the gap region, whose spectral weight dominates in the overall frequency range. Biased bilayers and gapped monolayers of graphene have a strong photoconductivity in the visible and infrared window, allowing for photocurrent densities of several nA cm/W. We further show that the richer electronic dispersion of BBG at low energies and the ability to change its band-gap on demand allows a higher tunability of the photocurrent, including not only its magnitude but also, and significantly, its polarity.