青木 伸之

We demonstrate high-definition, direct-printing of micron-scale metallic dots, comprised of close-packed gold nanoparticles, by utilizing the optical vortex laser-induced forward transfer technique. We observe that the spin angular momentum of the optical vortex, associated with circular polarization, assists in the close-packing of the gold nanoparticles within the printed dots. The printed dots exhibit excellent electrical conductivity without any additional sintering processes. This technique of applying optical vortex laser-induced forward transfer to metallic dots is an innovative approach to metal printing, which does not require additional sintering. It also serves to highlight new insights into light–matter interactions.

We demonstrate high-definition, direct-printing of micron-scale metallic dots, comprised of close-packed gold nanoparticles, by utilizing the optical vortex laser-induced forward transfer technique. We observe that the spin angular momentum of the optical vortex, associated with circular polarization, assists in the close-packing of the gold nanoparticles within the printed dots. The printed dots exhibit excellent electrical conductivity without any additional sintering processes. This technique of applying optical vortex laser-induced forward transfer to metallic dots is an innovative approach to metal printing, which does not require additional sintering. It also serves to highlight new insights into light–matter interactions.

Abstract Two-dimensional (2D) materials and their heterostructures exhibit intriguing optoelectronic properties; thus, they are good platforms for exploring fundamental research and further facilitating real device applications. The key is to preserve the high quality and intrinsic properties of 2D materials and their heterojunction interface even in production scale during the transfer and assembly process so as to apply in semiconductor manufacturing field. In this study, we successfully adopted a wet transfer existing method to separate mediator-assisted wafer-scale from SiO₂/Si growing wafer for the first time with intermediate annealing to fabricate wafer-scale MoS₂/h-BN and WS₂/h-BN heterostructures on a SiO₂/Si wafer. Interestingly, the high-quality wafer-scale 2D material heterostructure optical properties were enhanced and confirmed by Raman and photoluminescence spectroscopy. Our approach can be applied to other 2D materials and expedite mass production for industrial applications.

Abstract Stacking of graphene with hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) can dramatically modify its bands from their usual linear form, opening a series of narrow minigaps that are separated by wider minibands. While the resulting spectrum offers strong potential for use in functional (opto)electronic devices, a proper understanding of the dynamics of hot carriers in these bands is a prerequisite for such applications. In this work, we therefore apply a strategy of rapid electrical pulsing to drive carriers in graphene/h-BN heterostructures deep into the dissipative limit of strong electron-phonon coupling. By using electrical gating to move the chemical potential through the “Moiré bands”, we demonstrate a cyclical evolution between metallic and semiconducting states. This behavior is captured in a self-consistent model of non-equilibrium transport that considers the competition of electrically driven inter-band tunneling and hot-carrier scattering by strongly non-equilibrium phonons. Overall, our results demonstrate how a treatment of the dynamics of both hot carriers and hot phonons is essential to understanding the properties of functional graphene superlattices.

Abstract The doping technique is vital for applying two-dimensional (2D) materials such as transition metal dichalcogenide (TMDC)-based field effect transistors (FETs), which can control the channel polarity and improve the performance. However, as conventional doping techniques for silicon-based FET are not suitable for 2D materials, the realization of heavy doping of TMDC materials is challenging, especially for n-type heavy doping. This study reports a simple, regioselective, controllable, and chemically stable heavy doping method for 2H-MoTe₂ crystal via high-density laser irradiation. The polarity of the doping can be controlled by changing the irradiation environment. For the MoTe₂-nFET, good performance with enhanced contact properties was obtained using the contact doping method via laser irradiation in a vacuum environment.

Abstract We report fabrication and measurements of single-layer SnSe₂/chemical vapor deposition (CVD) graphene/hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) field-effect device. The coherent magnetotransport properties of such a hybrid system are systematically studied so as to obtain a good understanding of the structure which may find potential applications in thermoelectricity, flexible electronics, quantum coherent sensor as well as stress sensing. We observed weak localization well described by the Hikami-Larkin-Nagaoka model and the phase coherence length is around 540 nm for V_BG = −20 V at 1 K. The phase coherence length could be effectively changed by controlling the temperature and gate voltage. We also obtain good field-effect dependent properties of atomic-scale SnSe₂ ultrathin film/graphene system. Given the current challenges in tuning single-layer SnSe₂/CVD graphene on h-BN with a suitable dielectric layer, our results suggest the potential of quantum coherent effect, an effective way for development of future quantum nano-switch device.

Abstract Magnetic force microscopy (MFM) is utilized to characterize the magnetic moment in nanostructured plant leaf-derived graphene quantum dot clusters (GQDCs). The MFM signal reveals that the magnetic response of the GQDCs depends on the height and width of the GQDCs. However, individual GQDs, and smaller clusters with widths of less than 20 nm, have not shown any observable magnetic signal. Importantly, experimental analyses suggest that the magnetic signal of GQDCs distributed in a plane can be effectively detected at room temperature. These results could pave the way for future graphene-based magnetic storage media and spin manipulation quantum devices.

© 2020 IOP Publishing Ltd. Although semiconductor to metal phase transformation of MoTe2 by high-density laser irradiation of more than 0.3 MW cm-2 has been reported, we reveal that the laser-induced-metal (LIM) phase is not the 1T′ structure derived by a polymorphic-structural phase transition but consists instead of semi-metallic Te induced by photo-thermal decomposition of MoTe2. The technique is used to fabricate a field effect transistor with a Pd/2H-MoTe2/LIM structure having an asymmetric metallic contact, and its contact properties are studied via scanning gate microscopy. We confirm that a Schottky barrier (a diffusion potential) is always formed at the Pd/2H-MoTe2 boundary and obstacles a carrier transport while an Ohmic contact is realized at the 2H-MoTe2/LIM phase junction for both n- and p-type carriers.

© 2019 Elsevier Ltd We report fabrication and measurements of hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN)/chemical vapor deposition (CVD) graphene/h-BN heterostructure devices without using expensive, time-consuming electron-beam lithography and toxic carbon tetrafluoride or sulfur tetrafluoride etching. We use efficient transfer of h-BN/CVD graphene by polypropylene carbonate onto a pre-prepared metal contacts/h-BN/SiO2 substrate. In this case, CVD-graphene is suspended from the h-BN substrate which allows efficient gas annealing process for improving the device mobility. Interestingly, we find that the top h-BN capping layer could enhance the carrier interference effect in CVD graphene, a great advantage for low-cost graphene-based interference-type electronic devices.

© 2019 American Chemical Society. We use transient electrical measurements to investigate the details of self-heating and charge trapping in graphene transistors encapsulated in hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) and operated under strongly nonequilibrium conditions. Relative to more standard devices fabricated on SiO 2 substrates, encapsulation is shown to lead to an enhanced immunity to charge trapping, the influence of which is only apparent under the combined influence of strong gate and drain electric fields. Although the precise source of the trapping remains to be determined, one possibility is that the strong gate field may lower the barriers associated with native defects in the h-BN, allowing them to mediate the capture of energetic carriers from the graphene channel. Self-heating in these devices is identified through the observation of time-dependent variations of the current in graphene and is found to be described by a time constant consistent with expectations for nonequilibrium phonon conduction into the dielectric layers of the device. Overall, our results suggest that h-BN-encapsulated graphene devices provide an excellent system for implementations in which operation under strongly nonequilibrium conditions is desired.

© 2018 Elsevier Ltd We report large, non-saturating magnetoresistance (MR) of ∼140% in single layer chemical vapor deposition (CVD) graphene with an h-BN capping layer at room temperature at B = 9 T. Based on the classical model developed by Parish and Littlewood, our results show that the MR is proportional to the average mobility < μ > and decreases with increasing temperature. In contrast, in a large-area, extremely homogenous single layer epitaxial graphene (EG) device, the MR is saturating and is inversely proportional to <μ> which is consistent with the finite resistance network picture. By comparing the results obtained from CVD graphene with an h-BN capping layer with those from the EG device, we show that the non-saturating linear characteristics come from multi-channel current paths in a two-dimensional plane due to the intrinsic grain boundaries and domains of CVD graphene by capping an h-BN layer that increase the <μ> of CVD graphene. Our results on CVD graphene with an h-BN capping layer pave the way for industrial schemes of graphene-based and air-stable magnetic field sensors with a linear, large response at room temperature.

© 2018 C. Chuang et al. We investigate the energy relaxation of hot carriers in a CVD-grown graphene device with a top h-BN layer by driving the devices into the nonequilibrium regime. By using the magnetic field dependent conductance fluctuations of our graphene device as a self-thermometer, we can determine the effective carrier temperature T e at various driving currents I while keeping the lattice temperature T L fixed. Interestingly, it is found that T e is proportional to I, indicating little electron-phonon scattering in our device. Furthermore the average rate of energy loss per carrier P e is proportional to (T e 2 - T L 2), suggesting the heat diffusion rather than acoustic phonon processes in our system. The long energy relaxation times due to the weak electron-phonon coupling in CVD graphene capped with h-BN layer as well as in exfoliated multilayer graphene can find applications in hot carrier graphene-based devices.

© 2017 IOP Publishing Ltd. A flake of monolayer graphene was sandwiched between boron nitride sheets. Temperature dependent Shubnikov-de Haas measurements were performed to access how this technique influences the electronic properties of the graphene sample. The maximum mobility found in this configuration was approximately 105 cm2 Vs -1. From the phase of the oscillations a Berry phase β of 1/2 was obtained indicating the presence of Dirac fermions. We obtained Fermi velocities around m s-1 which imply hopping energies close to 2.5 eV. Furthermore, the carrier lifetime is typically higher than that found in graphene supported by SiO2, reaching values higher than 700 fs.

© 2016 American Chemical Society. Utilizing an innovative combination of scanning-probe and spectroscopic techniques, supported by first-principles calculations, we demonstrate how electron-beam exposure of field-effect transistors, implemented from ultrathin molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), may cause nanoscale structural modifications that in turn significantly modify the electrical operation of these devices. Quite surprisingly, these modifications are induced by even the relatively low electron doses used in conventional electron-beam lithography, which are found to induce compressive strain in the atomically thin MoS2. Likely arising from sulfur-vacancy formation in the exposed regions, the strain gives rise to a local widening of the MoS2 bandgap, an idea that is supported both by our experiment and by the results of first-principles calculations. A nanoscale potential barrier develops at the boundary between exposed and unexposed regions and may cause extrinsic variations in the resulting electrical characteristics exhibited by the transistor. The widespread use of electron-beam lithography in nanofabrication implies that the presence of such strain must be carefully considered when seeking to harness the potential of atomically thin transistors. At the same time, this work also promises the possibility of exploiting the strain as a means to achieve "bandstructure engineering" in such devices.

© 2016 American Chemical Society. We demonstrate a novel form of thermally-assisted hysteresis in the transfer curves of monolayer MoS2 FETs, characterized by the appearance of a large gate-voltage window and distinct current levels that differ by a factor of ∼102. The hysteresis emerges for temperatures in excess of 400 K and, from studies in which the gate-voltage sweep parameters are varied, appears to be related to charge injection into the SiO2 gate dielectric. The thermally-assisted memory is strongly suppressed in equivalent measurements performed on bilayer transistors, suggesting that weak screening in the monolayer system plays a vital role in generating its strongly sensitive response to the charge-injection process. By exploiting the full features of the hysteretic transfer curves, programmable memory operation is demonstrated. The essential principles demonstrated here point the way to a new class of thermally assisted memories based on atomically thin two-dimensional semiconductors.

© 2016 The Author(s). We have fabricated a high mobility device, composed of a monolayer graphene flake sandwiched between two sheets of hexagonal boron nitride. Conductance fluctuations as functions of a back gate voltage and magnetic field were obtained to check for ergodicity. Non-linear dynamics concepts were used to study the nature of these fluctuations. The distribution of eigenvalues was estimated from the conductance fluctuations with Gaussian kernels and it indicates that the carrier motion is chaotic at low temperatures. We argue that a two-phase dynamical fluid model best describes the transport in this system and can be used to explain the violation of the so-called ergodic hypothesis found in graphene.

© 2016 American Physical Society. A critical aspect of quantum mechanics is the nonlocal nature of the wave function, a characteristic that may yield unexpected coupling of nominally isolated systems. The capacity to detect this coupling can be vital in many situations, especially those in which its strength is weak. In this work, we address this problem in the context of mesoscopic physics, by implementing an electron-wave realization of a Fano interferometer using pairs of coupled quantum point contacts (QPCs). Within this scheme, the discrete level required for a Fano resonance is provided by pinching off one of the QPCs, thereby inducing the formation of a quasibound state at the center of its self-consistent potential barrier. Using this system, we demonstrate a form of nonequilibrium Fano resonance (NEFR), in which nonlinear electrical biasing of the interferometer gives rise to pronounced distortions of its Fano resonance. Our experimental results are captured well by a quantitative theoretical model, which considers a system in which a standard two-path Fano interferometer is coupled to an additional, intruder, continuum. According to this theory, the observed distortions in the Fano resonance arise only in the presence of coupling to the intruder, indicating that the NEFR provides a sensitive means to infer the presence of weak coupling between mesoscopic systems.

© 2016 IOP Publishing Ltd. Low-temperature scanning gate microscopy (LT-SGM) studies of graphene allow one to obtain important spatial information regarding coherent transport such as weak localization (WL) and universal conductance fluctuations. Although fascinating LT-SGM results on pristine graphene prepared by mechanical exfoliation have been reported in the literature, there appears to be a dearth of LT-SGM results on chemical vapor deposition (CVD)-grown graphene whose large scale and flexible substrate transferability make it an ideal candidate for coherent electronic applications. To this end, we have performed LT-SGM studies on CVD-grown graphene wide constriction (0.8 μm), which can be readily prepared by cost-effective optical lithography fully compatible with those in wafer foundry, in the WL regime. We find that the movable local gate can sensitively modulate the total conductance of the CVD graphene constriction possibly due to the intrinsic grain boundaries and merged domains, a great advantage for applications in coherent electronics. Moreover, such a conductance modulation by LT-SGM provides an additional, approximately magnetic-field-independent probe for studying coherent transport such as WL in graphene and spatial conductance variation.

© 2016 Chieh-I Liu et al. We have studied the carrier densities n of multilayer and monolayer epitaxial graphene devices over a wide range of temperatures T. It is found that, in the high temperature regime (typically T ≥ 200 K), ln(n) shows a linear dependence of 1/T, showing activated behavior. Such results yield activation energies ΔE for charge trapping in epitaxial graphene ranging from 196 meV to 34 meV. We find that ΔE decreases with increasing mobility. Vacuum annealing experiments suggest that both adsorbates on EG and the SiC/graphene interface play a role in charge trapping in EG devices.

© 2016 AIP Publishing LLC. We use a scanning gate microscopy to perturb coherent transport in chemical vapor deposition (CVD) graphene wide constriction. Particularly, we observe conductance oscillations in the wide constriction region (W ∼ 800 nm) characterized by spatial conductance variations, which imply formation of the nanometer-scale ring structure due to the merged domains and intrinsic grain boundaries. Moreover, additional hot charges from high current can suppress the coherent transport, suggesting that the hot carriers with a wide spreading kinetic energy could easily tunnel merged domains and intrinsic grain boundaries in CVD-grown graphene due to the heating effect, a great advantage for applications in graphene-based interference-type nano-electronics.

© 2016 Chiashain Chuang et al. Investigating the charge transport behavior in one-dimensional quantum confined system such as the localized states and interference effects due to the nanoscale grain boundaries and merged domains in wide chemical vapor deposition graphene constriction is highly desirable since it would help to realize industrial graphene-based electronic device applications. Our data suggests a crossover from interference coherent transport to carriers flushing into grain boundaries and merged domains when increasing the current. Moreover, many-body fermionic carriers with disordered system in our case can be statistically described by mean-field Gross-Pitaevskii equation via a single wave function by means of the quantum hydrodynamic approximation. The novel numerical simulation method supports the experimental results and suggests that the extreme high barrier potential regions on graphene from the grain boundaries and merged domains can be strongly affected by additional hot charges. Such interesting results could pave the way for quantum transport device by supplying additional hot current to flood into the grain boundaries and merged domains in one-dimensional quantum confined CVD graphene, a great advantage for developing graphene-based coherent electronic devices.

© 2015 AIP Publishing LLC. Monolayer (MLG) and bilayer (BLG) graphene devices have been fabricated with integrated antennas and have been investigated for a wideband terahertz (THz) detection at room temperature (RT). The devices show opposite (metallic vs. semiconducting, respectively) temperature coefficients of their resistance, which enable us to achieve a reproducible THz response via bolometric heating. The bolometric nature of this response is inferred by determining the spectral density of the 1/f resistance noise exhibited by the devices, as a function of the incident THz power. With increasing power, the spectral density varies in the two devices in a manner that reflects the opposite signs of their resistance temperature coefficients. The bolometric response is furthermore confirmed for both devices by the variation of their Hooge parameter as a function of the THz power. Overall, these observations confirm the capacity of graphene devices for sensitive broadband THz detection near RT.

© 2015 American Chemical Society. Lateral and vertical two-dimensional heterostructure devices, in particular graphene-MoS2, have attracted profound interest as they offer additional functionalities over normal two-dimensional devices. Here, we have carried out electrical and optical characterization of graphene-MoS2 heterostructure. The few-layer MoS2 devices with metal electrode at one end and monolayer graphene electrode at the other end show nonlinearity in drain current with drain voltage sweep due to asymmetrical Schottky barrier height at the contacts and can be modulated with an external gate field. The doping effect of MoS2 on graphene was observed as double Dirac points in the transfer characteristics of the graphene field-effect transistor (FET) with a few-layer MoS2 overlapping the middle part of the channel, whereas the underlapping of graphene have negligible effect on MoS2 FET characteristics, which showed typical n-type behavior. The heterostructure also exhibits a strongest optical response for 520 nm wavelength, which decreases with higher wavelengths. Another distinct feature observed in the heterostructure is the peak in the photocurrent around zero gate voltage. This peak is distinguished from conventional MoS2 FETs, which show a continuous increase in photocurrent with back-gate voltage. These results offer significant insight and further enhance the understanding of the graphene-MoS2 heterostructure.

© 2015 American Chemical Society. We fabricate transistors from chemical vapor deposition-grown monolayer MoS2 crystals and demonstrate excellent current saturation at large drain voltages (Vd). The low-field characteristics of these devices indicate that the electron mobility is likely limited by scattering from charged impurities. The current-voltage characteristics exhibit variable range hopping at low Vd and evidence of velocity saturation at higher Vd. This work confirms the excellent potential of MoS2 as a possible channel-replacement material and highlights the role of multiple transport phenomena in governing its transistor action.

© 2015 IOP Publishing Ltd. We have fabricated a bilayer molybdenum disulphide (MoS2) transistor on boron nitride (BN) substrate and performed Raman spectroscopy and electrical measurements with this device. The characteristic Raman peaks show an upshift about 2.5 cm-1 with the layer lying on BN, and a narrower line width in comparison with those on a SiO2 substrate. The device has a maximum drain current larger than 1 μA and a high current on/off ratio of greater than 108. In the temperature range of 100 K-293 K, the two terminal gate effect mobility and the carrier density do not change significantly with temperature. Results of the Raman and electrical measurements reveal that BN is a suitable substrate for atomic layer electrical devices.

© 2015 IOP Publishing Ltd. We investigate edge state transmission in quantum point contacts (QPCs) in the fractional quantum-Hall regime, finding behavior reminiscent of a metal-insulator transition. The transition is suggested by an unusual behavior of the differential conductance in the fractional-quantum-Hall regime, and by the presence of a fixed point and universal scaling in the temperature dependence of the linear conductance. Noting that the 0.7 feature evolves continuously into a last fractional plateau at high magnetic fields, we suggest that this still unresolved feature may itself be viewed as a manifestation of a local, microscopic, metal-insulator transition.

Copyright © 2015 American Scientific Publishers All rights reserved. We have performed transport measurements on a multi-layer graphene device fabricated by conventional mechanical exfoliation. By using the zero-field resistance of our graphene device as a self-thermometer, we are able to determine the effective Dirac fermion temperature TDF at various driving currents I while keeping the lattice constant fixed. Interesting, it is found that TDF ∝ Iα, where α ∼ 1. According to theoretical and experimental studies, the exponent α is given by 2/(2 + p) where the charge-phonon scattering rate 1/τph is proportional to Tp. Therefore our results yield p ∼ 0, suggesting that there is little Dirac fermion-phonon scattering, a great advantage for applications in nanoelectronics.

© Springer Japan 2015. This chapter describes a research on chiral metal structures on the nanoscale (chiral metal nanostructures) formed by the irradiation of an optical vortex with orbital angular momentum. The purpose of the present research has been to clarify the relationship between the orbital, spin, and total angular momenta of light and nanostructures through laser ablation processes. As a result, the orbital angular momentum of the optical vortex is transferred to the metal so as to create a chiral nanostructure response by the optical vortex helicity. The chirality of the nanostructures can also be selectively controlled merely by changing the sign of the total angular momentum. The total angular momentum of light further determines the spiral spatial frequency of the chiral nanostructures. By adjusting the numerical aperture of a focusing objective lens and the incident laser power, a chiral nanostructure with a tip curvature of less than 40 nm, corresponding to 1/25th of the laser wavelength (1,064 nm), was successfully fabricated. The chemical composition of the nanostructure was almost identical to that of the substrate. A two-dimensional 5×5 nanostructure array was also fabricated. We also address a chiral surface relief (termed ‘conch’-shaped relief) formation in an azo-polymer through photo-isomerization process.

Scanning gate microscopy (SGM) is a novel technique that has been used to image characteristic features related to the coherent electron flow in mesoscopic structures. For instance, SGM has successfully been applied to study peculiar electron transport properties that arise due to small levels of disorder in a system. The particular case of an InGaAs quantum well layer in a heterostructure, which is dominated by a quasi-ballistic regime, was analyzed. A quantum point contact fabricated onto this material exhibits conduction fluctuations that are not expected in typical high-mobility heterostructures such as AlGaAs/GaAs. SGM revealed not only interference patterns corresponding to specific conductance fluctuations but also mode-dependent resistance peaks corresponding to the first and second quantum levels of conductance (2e 2/h) at zero magnetic field. On the other hand, clear conductance plateaus originating from the integer quantum Hall effect were observed at high magnetic fields. The physical size of incompressible edge channels was estimated from cross-sectional analysis of these images. © 2014 IOP Publishing Ltd.

We investigate the influence of a perpendicular magnetic field on hot-carrier energy relaxation in bilayer graphene. Working in the regime of incipient Landau quantization, we find that the magnetic field influences the relaxation in a very different manner, dependent upon the position of the Fermi level relative to the Dirac point. While for carrier densities >10 12 cm-2 relaxation is slowed by the magnetic field, as the density of free carriers approaches zero it instead becomes quicker. We discuss this behavior in terms of the emergence of the zero-energy Landau level, and the role of charge puddling in graphene. © 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.

We investigate the linear and non-linear conductance of quantum point contacts (QPCs), in the region near pinch-off where Kondo physics has previously been connected to the appearance of the 0.7 feature. In studies of seven different QPCs, fabricated in the same high-mobility GaAs/AlGaAs heterojunction, the linear conductance is widely found to show the presence of the 0.7 feature. The differential conductance, on the other hand, does not generally exhibit the zero-bias anomaly (ZBA) that has been proposed to indicate the Kondo effect. Indeed, even in the small subset of QPCs found to exhibit such an anomaly, the linear conductance does not always follow the universal temperature-dependent scaling behavior expected for the Kondo effect. Taken collectively, our observations demonstrate that, unlike the 0.7 feature, the ZBA is not a generic feature of low-temperature QPC conduction. We furthermore conclude that the mere observation of the ZBA alone is insufficient evidence for concluding that Kondo physics is active. While we do not rule out the possibility that the Kondo effect may occur in QPCs, our results appear to indicate that its observation requires a very strict set of conditions to be satisfied. This should be contrasted with the case of the 0.7 feature, which has been apparent since the earliest experimental investigations of QPC transport. © 2014 IOP Publishing Ltd.

Through a combination of experiment and theory we establish the possibility of achieving strong tuning of Fano resonances (FRs), by allowing their usual two-path geometry to interfere with an additional, "intruder", continuum. As the coupling strength to this intruder is varied, we predict strong modulations of the resonance line shape that, in principle at least, may exceed the amplitude of the original FR itself. For a proof-of-concept demonstration of this phenomenon, we construct a nanoscale interferometer from nonlocally coupled quantum point contacts and utilize the unique features of their density of states to realize the intruder. External control of the intruder coupling is enabled by means of an applied magnetic field, in the presence of which we demonstrate the predicted distortions of the FR. This general scheme for resonant control should be broadly applicable to a variety of wave-based systems, opening up the possibility of new applications in areas such as chemical and biological sensing and secure communications. © 2014 American Chemical Society.

We have performed magneto transport measurements on a multi-layer graphene device fabricated by conventional mechanical exfoliation. Suppression of weak localization (WL) as evidenced by the negative magnetoresistance (NMR) centered at zero field, and reproducible universal conductance fluctuations (UCFs) are observed. Interestingly, it is found that the phase coherence lengths calculated by fitting the observed NMR to conventional WL theory are longer than those determined from fitting the amplitudes of the UCFs to theory in the low temperature regime (T ≤ 8 K). In the high temperature regime (T > 8 K), the phase coherence lengths calculated by fitting the observed NMR to conventional WL theory are shorter than those determined from fitting the amplitudes of the UCFs to theory. Our new results therefore indicate a difference in the electron phase-breaking process between the two models of WL and UCFs in graphene. We speculate that the presence of the capping and bottom graphene layers, which leads the enhancement of disorder in-between, improves the localization condition for WL effect during carrier transportation in the low temperature regime. With increasing temperature, the localization condition for WL in multi-layer graphene becomes much weaker due to strong thermal damping. Therefore, the phase coherence lengths calculated by fitting the observed NMR to conventional WL theory are shorter than those determined from fitting the amplitudes of the UCFs to theory at high temperatures. © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

We investigate energy relaxation of hot carriers in monolayer and bilayer graphene devices, demonstrating that the relaxation rate increases significantly as the Dirac point is approached from either the conduction or valence band. This counterintuitive behavior appears consistent with ideas of charge puddling under disorder, suggesting that it becomes very difficult to excite carriers out of these localized regions. These results therefore demonstrate how the peculiar properties of graphene extend also to the behavior of its nonequilibrium carriers. © 2013 American Chemical Society.

Multi-layer graphene has many unique properties for realizing graphene-based nano-electronic device applications as well as for fundamental studies. This paper mainly focuses on the conductance fluctuations in multi-layer graphene. The low-temperature saturation of dephasing time in multi-layer graphene is one order magnitude shorter than that in single-layer graphene, and the onset temperature of the low-temperature saturation of dephasing time in multi-layer graphene was significantly lower than that in single-layer graphene, which is noteworthy in the low-temperature saturation of dephasing time. We speculate that the carrier transport is shielded by capping transport and bottom layer graphene due to the substrate impurities and air molecules scattering. © 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.

The focus of this review is recent work in which we have demonstrated a highly-flexible approach to the study of Fano-resonance phenomena, by making use of the mesoscopic devices known as quantum point contacts (QPCs). Utilizing the ability of these structures to function as an on-demand quantum state, we demonstrate a highly-flexible system for the investigation of Fano resonances. Our approach involves making measurements of non-locally coupled pairs of QPCs, one of which is used to form the discrete state needed for the Fano resonance, while the other serves as a detector whose conductance is sensitive to the energy of this state. As a demonstration of the flexibility of this approach, we show how it can be used to implement a multi-state Fano resonance, in which two discrete states undergo a robust interaction that is achieved by coupling them to each other through a common continuum. (C) 2013 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim