Optical Spectroscopy Of Graphene And Carbon Nanotubes

Optical Spectroscopy of Graphene and Carbon Nanotubes

Feng Wang
UC Berkeley

ABSTRACT:

Graphene, a single atomic layer of hexagonal carbon lattice, constitutes the ultimate two-dimensional structure. When the graphene is folded up, it forms single-walled carbon nanotubes, a prototypical one-dimensional system. Such two- and one-dimensional graphitic carbon systems exhibit many fascinating optical behaviors. In this talk, I will describe the remarkable gate-dependence of the optical transitions in graphene. These optical transitions can be further varied through interlayer coupling as observed in graphene bilayers, and through quantum confinement effect as realized in single-walled carbon nanotubes. For the investigation of carbon nanotubes, we develop optical spectroscopy techniques capable of probing individual carbon nanotubes, Using such techniques, we demonstrate the correlation between the nanotube electronic transitions and their atomic structures, and reveal the distinct characteristics of optical transitions in one dimension.