Graphene quantum dot bolometer camera: practical approaches and preliminary results

Abstract

Graphene is an exciting candidate for the detection of high-frequency electromagnetic radiation. Here, we have studied the bolometric performance of epitaxial graphene quantum dots (Q.D.s) on the silicon carbide (SiC) substrate in the terahertz (THz) range. The graphene Q.D. having a diameter in the 200 nm range, exhibited an extremely high resistance variation with temperature up to 4.7 MΩ K-1, a crucial parameter for the hot electron bolometers. The graphene Q.D.s bolometers have been fabricated in different geometrical configurations, such as variations in electrode spacing (2.5 and 5.0 μm) and parallelly connected arrays of 4 and 8 Q.D.s. It is demonstrated that the absorbed power can be improved by tuning the bolometer geometrical configuration and the active graphene area, and the electrical responsivity is still very high for an extensive range of absorbed power. Additionally, we report that the photo response of graphene Q.D. bolometer devices is meagerly affected by the presence of a magnetic field as high as 15 T. The results presented here open ways to continue to optimize and realize the chip-scale matrix of the graphene Q.D.s bolometers for THz imaging and magneto-optical spectroscopy applications.