Reflectance of graphene-coated dielectric plates in the framework of Dirac model: Joint action of energy gap and chemical potential

TL;DR

This paper develops a quantum electrodynamics-based formalism to analyze how energy gap, chemical potential, and temperature jointly influence the reflectance of graphene-coated dielectric plates, with potential applications in optical device optimization.

Contribution

It introduces a first-principles polarization tensor approach within the Dirac model to calculate reflectance of graphene-coated plates considering nonzero energy gap and chemical potential.

Findings

Reflectance approaches unity at low frequencies.

Reflectance decreases with increasing frequency.

Temperature effects are more significant at smaller chemical potentials.

Abstract

We investigate the reflectance of a dielectric plate coated with a graphene sheet which possesses the nonzero energy gap and chemical potential at any temperature. The general formalism for the reflectance using the polarization tensor is presented in the framework of Dirac model. It allows calculation of the reflectivity properties for any material plate coated with real graphene sheet on the basis offirst principles of quantum electrodynamics. Numerical computations of the reflectance are performed for the graphene-coated SiO$_2$ plate at room, liquid-nitrogen, and liquid-helium temperatures. We demonstrate that there is a nontrivial interplay between the chemical potential, energy gap, frequency, and temperature in their joint action on the reflectance of a graphene-coated plate. Specifically, it is shown that at the fixed frequency of an incident light an increase of the chemical potential and the energy gap affect the reflectance in opposite directions by increasing and decreasing it, respectively. According to our results, the reflectance approaches unity at sufficiently low frequencies and drops to that of an uncoated plate at high frequencies for any values of the chemical potential and energy gap. The impact of temperature on the reflectance is found to be more pronounced for graphene coatings with smaller chemical potentials. The obtained results could be applied for optimization of optical detectors and other devices exploiting graphene coatings.