Phonon-mediated room-temperature quantum Hall transport in graphene

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that in graphene encapsulated in hBN, the quantum Hall effect can be observed at room temperature, with dissipation primarily caused by electron-phonon interactions, extending understanding of phonon-limited transport.

Contribution

It reveals a novel high-field transport regime in graphene where electron-phonon scattering dominates dissipation at room temperature.

Findings

Quantum Hall effect observed at room temperature in graphene.

Dissipation in the QH phase is mainly due to electron-phonon scattering.

High B-field behavior correlates with zero B-field mobility.

Abstract

The quantum Hall (QH) effect in two-dimensional electron systems (2DESs) is conventionally observed at liquid-helium temperatures, where lattice vibrations are strongly suppressed and bulk carrier scattering is dominated by disorder. However, due to large Landau level (LL) separation (~2000 K at B = 30 T), graphene can support the QH effect up to room temperature (RT), concomitant with a non-negligible population of acoustic phonons with a wave-vector commensurate to the inverse electronic magnetic length. Here, we demonstrate that graphene encapsulated in hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) realizes a novel transport regime, where dissipation in the QH phase is governed predominantly by electron-phonon scattering. Investigating thermally-activated transport at filling factor 2 up to RT in an ensemble of back-gated devices, we show that the high B-field behaviour correlates with their zero B-field transport mobility. By this means, we extend the well-accepted notion of phonon-limited resistivity in ultra-clean graphene to a hitherto unexplored high-field realm.