Effect of Energy Band Gap in Graphene on Negative Refraction through the Veselago Lens and Electron Conductance

TL;DR

This paper explores how the energy band gap in graphene influences negative refraction and electron conductance at p-n junctions, revealing conditions under which graphene acts as a metamaterial with negative refractive index.

Contribution

It analyzes the impact of energy dependence and band gap on negative refraction and conductance in graphene p-n junctions, extending understanding beyond ideal massless Dirac fermions.

Findings

Identifies a specific region in energy-band gap space with negative refractive index.

Shows that band gap and energy affect Klein tunneling and focusing behavior.

Provides calculations of ballistic conductance variations with band gap and energy.

Abstract

A remarkable property of intrinsic graphene is that upon doping, electrons and holes travel through the monolayer thick material with constant velocity which does not depend on energy up to about $0.3$ eV (Dirac fermions), as though the electrons and holes are massless particles and antiparticles which move at the Fermi velocity $v_F$. Consequently, there is Klein tunneling at a $p-n$ junction, in which there is no backscattering at normal incidence of massless Dirac fermions. However, this process yielding perfect transmission at normal incidence is expected to be affected when the group velocity of the charge carriers is energy dependent and there is non-zero effective mass for the target particle. We investigate how away from normal incidence the combined effect of incident electron energy $\epsilon$ and band gap parameter $\Delta$ can determine whether a $p-n$ junction would allow focusing of an electron beam by behaving like a Veselago lens with negative refractive index. We demonstrate that there is a specific region in $\epsilon-\Delta$ space where the index of refraction is negative, i.e., where monolayer graphene behaves as a metamaterial. Outside this region, the refractive index may be positive or there may be no refraction at all. We compute the ballistic conductance across a $p-n$ junction as a function of $\Delta$ and $\epsilon$ and compare our results with those for a single electrostatic potential barrier and multiple barriers.