Transmission of Terahertz Acoustic Waves through Graphene-Semiconductor Layered Structures

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Author(s)

Shuhui Zhang¹, Wen Xu^1,2*, Francois M. Peeters³

Affiliation(s)

¹Key Laboratory of Materials Physics, Institute of Solid State Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei, China.
²Department of Physics, Yunnan University, Kunming, China.
³Department of Physics, University of Antwerp, Antwerpen, Belgium.

ABSTRACT

We present a theoretical study of the acoustic properties of graphene-semiconductor layered structures. The transmission coefficient for longitudinal acoustic waves through the structure is evaluated by using the usual transfer matrix method. We find that the finite thickness of the graphene layer can affect significantly the transmission spectrum of the proposed structure. The features of the sound transmittance depend strongly on the number of the graphene layers. For mul-ti-layer graphene-semiconductor structures, the sound transmission spectrum looks very similar to that for an ideal superlattice. For such structures, terahertz acoustic forbidden gap can be observed even when a thick semiconductor layer is considered. These results are the consequence of the Bragg’s condition for sound waves. This study is relevant to the exploration of the acoustic properties of graphene-based layered structures and to the application of graphene as high-frequency acoustic devices.

KEYWORDS

Graphene, Layeres Structure, Sound Transmittance, Finite Thickness

Cite this paper

Zhang, S. , Xu, W. and Peeters, F. (2014) Transmission of Terahertz Acoustic Waves through Graphene-Semiconductor Layered Structures. Graphene, 3, 60-70. doi: 10.4236/graphene.2014.34009.

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