Hot carriers in an intrinsic graphene

O. G. Balev, F. T. Vasko, V. Ryzhii

Published 2009-01-17Version 1

Heating of carriers in an intrinsic graphene under dc electric field is considered taking into account the intraband energy relaxation due to acoustic phonon scattering and the interband generation-recombination transitions due to thermal radiation. The distribution of nonequilibrium carriers is obtained for the cases when the intercarrier scattering is unessential and when the carrier-carrier Coulomb scattering effectively establishes the quasiequilibrium distribution with the temperature and the density of carriers that are determined by the balance equations. Because of an interplay between weak energy relaxation and generation-recombination processes a very low threshold of nonlinear response takes place. The nonlinear current-voltage characteristics are calculated for the case of the momentum relaxation caused by the elastic scattering. Obtained current-voltage characteristics show low threshold of nonlinear behavior and appearance of the second ohmic region, for strong fields.