Enhanced Terahertz Photoresponse via Acoustic Plasmon Cavity Resonances in Scalable Graphene

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how acoustic graphene plasmons in scalable CVD graphene can be used to enhance terahertz photoresponse through cavity resonances, enabling efficient, tunable, and scalable THz detection.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach using acoustic graphene plasmons in CVD graphene to achieve enhanced THz photoresponse via cavity resonances, without the need for hBN encapsulation.

Findings

Achieved up to 40% modulation of PTE response with temperature.

Demonstrated confinement factors of 165 (lateral) and 4000 (vertical).

Reproduced experimental results with thermal simulations.

Abstract

Precise control and nanoscale confinement of terahertz (THz) fields are essential requirements for emerging applications in photonics, quantum technologies, wireless communications, and sensing. Here, we demonstrate a polaritonic cavity enhanced THz photoresponse in an antenna coupled device based on chemical vapor deposited (CVD) monolayer graphene. The dipole antenna lobes simultaneously serve as two gate electrodes, concentrate the impinging THz field, and efficiently launch acoustic graphene plasmons (AGPs), which drive a strong photo-thermoelectric (PTE) signal. Between 6 and 90 K, the photovoltage exhibits pronounced peaks, modulating the PTE response by up to 40\%, that we attribute to AGPs forming a Fabry P\'erot THz cavity in the full or half graphene channel. Combined full wave and transport thermal simulations accurately reproduce the gate controlled plasmon wavelength, spatial absorption profile, and the resulting nonuniform electron heating responsible for the PTE response. The lateral and vertical maximum confinement factors of the AGP wavelength relative to the incident wavelength are 165 and 4000, respectively, for frequencies from 1.83 to 2.52 THz. These results demonstrate that wafer scalable CVD graphene, without hBN encapsulation, can host coherent AGP resonances and exhibit an efficient polaritonic enhanced photoresponse under appropriate gating, antenna coupling, and AGP cavity design, opening a route to scalable, polarization and frequency selective, liquid nitrogen cooled, and low power consumption THz detection platforms based on plasmon thermoelectric transduction.