Ultrasensitive and Wide-Bandwidth Thermal Measurements of Graphene at Low Temperatures

• Main Authors: Kin Chung Fong, K. C. Schwab
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Physical Society 2012-07-01
• Series: Physical Review X
• Online Access: http://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.2.031006

At low temperatures, the electron gas of graphene is expected to show both very weak coupling to thermal baths and rapid thermalization, properties which are desirable for use as a sensitive bolometer. We demonstrate an ultrasensitive, wide-bandwidth measurement scheme based on Johnson noise to probe the thermal-transport and thermodynamic properties of the electron gas of graphene, with a resolution of 2  mK/sqrt[Hz] and a bandwidth of 80 MHz. We have measured the electron-phonon coupling directly through energy transport, from 2–30 K and at a charge density of 2×10^{11}  cm^{-2}. We demonstrate bolometric mixing and utilize this effect to sense temperature oscillations with a period of 430 ps and determine the heat capacity of the electron gas to be 2×10^{-21}  J/(K·μm^{2}) at 5 K, which is consistent with that of a two-dimensional Dirac electron gas. These measurements suggest that graphene-based devices, together with wide-bandwidth noise thermometry, can generate substantial advances in the areas of ultrasensitive bolometry, calorimetry, microwave and terahertz photo-detection, and bolometric mixing for applications in fields such as observational astronomy and quantum information and measurement.