Imaging reconfigurable molecular concentration on a graphene field-effect transistor

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates reversible, electrically-controlled molecular surface concentration on graphene FETs at low temperature, enabling precise impurity doping and molecular energy level analysis through gate tuning.

Contribution

It introduces a method for reversible, gate-controlled molecular concentration on graphene, revealing a new approach for impurity doping and energy level determination.

Findings

Reversible control of molecular surface concentration via gate voltage.

Molecular rearrangement reduces electronic energy maintaining Fermi level pinning.

Surface concentration depends on back-gate voltage, capacitance, and molecular energy levels.

Abstract

The spatial arrangement of adsorbates deposited onto a clean surface in vacuum typically cannot be reversibly tuned. Here we use scanning tunneling microscopy to demonstrate that molecules deposited onto graphene field-effect transistors exhibit reversible, electrically-tunable surface concentration. Continuous gate-tunable control over the surface concentration of charged F4TCNQ molecules was achieved on a graphene FET at T = 4.5K. This capability enables precisely controlled impurity doping of graphene devices and also provides a new method for determining molecular energy level alignment based on the gate-dependence of molecular concentration. The gate-tunable molecular concentration can be explained by a dynamical molecular rearrangement process that reduces total electronic energy by maintaining Fermi level pinning in the device substrate. Molecular surface concentration in this case is fully determined by the device back-gate voltage, its geometric capacitance, and the energy difference between the graphene Dirac point and the molecular LUMO level.