Plasmon Damping Rates in Coulomb-Coupled 2D Layers in a Heterostructure

Materials (Basel). 2022 Nov 11;15(22):7964. doi: 10.3390/ma15227964.

Abstract

The Coulomb excitations of charge density oscillation are calculated for a double-layer heterostructure. Specifically, we consider two-dimensional (2D) layers of silicene and graphene on a substrate. From the obtained surface response function, we calculated the plasmon dispersion relations, which demonstrate how the Coulomb interaction renormalizes the plasmon frequencies. Most importantly, we have conducted a thorough investigation of how the decay rates of the plasmons in these heterostructures are affected by the Coulomb coupling between different types of two-dimensional materials whose separations could be varied. A novel effect of nullification of the silicene band gap is noticed when graphene is introduced into the system. To utilize these effects for experimental and industrial purposes, graphical results for the different parameters are presented.

Keywords: graphene; heterostructure; plasmon; silicene.