posted on 2019-08-06, 09:57authored byP Kumaravadivel, Mark GreenawayMark Greenaway, D Perello, A Berdyugin, J Birkbeck, J Wengraf, S Liu, JH Edgar, AK Geim, L Eaves, R Krishna Kumar
Van der Waals materials and their heterostructures offer a versatile platform for studying a
variety of quantum transport phenomena due to their unique crystalline properties and the
exceptional ability in tuning their electronic spectrum. However, most experiments are limited to devices that have lateral dimensions of only a few micrometres. Here, we perform
magnetotransport measurements on graphene/hexagonal boron-nitride Hall bars and show
that wider devices reveal additional quantum effects. In devices wider than ten micrometres
we observe distinct magnetoresistance oscillations that are caused by resonant scattering of
Landau-quantised Dirac electrons by acoustic phonons in graphene. The study allows us to
accurately determine graphene’s low energy phonon dispersion curves and shows that
transverse acoustic modes cause most of phonon scattering. Our work highlights the crucial
importance of device width when probing quantum effects and also demonstrates a precise,
spectroscopic method for studying electron-phonon interactions in van der Waals
heterostructures.
Funding
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), Graphene Flagship, the Royal Society and Lloyd’s Register Foundation
Materials Engineering and Processing program of the National Science Foundation under the award number CMMI 1538127
This is an Open Access Article. It is published by Springer under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/