UC Riverside

Novel two-dimensional materials with weak interlayer Van der Waals interaction are fantastic platforms to study novel physical phenomena. This thesis describes our investigation on two different Van der Waals materials: graphene and bismuth selenide with calcium doping (CaxBi2-xSe3, x as the doping level) in the topological insulator family. Firstly, we characterize the electrical transport behaviors of high-quality substrate-supported bilayer graphene devices with suspended metal gates. The device exhibits a transport gap induced by external electric field with an on/off ratio of 20,000, which could be explained by variable range hoping between localized states or disordered charge puddles. At large magnetic field, the device presents quantum Hall plateau at fractional values of conductance quantum, which arises from the equilibration of edge states between differentially doped regions. Secondly, we present our study on the electronic transport of CaxBi2-xSe3 thin films, which are three-dimensional topological insulators and coupled with superconducting leads. In these novel Josephson transistors, we observe different characteristic features by energy dispersion spectrum (EDS) and Raman spectroscopy, and the weak suppression in the critical current Ic. Thirdly, we explore the thermal expansion of suspended graphene. By in-situ scanning electron microscope (SEM), we measure the thickness-dependence of graphene's negative thermal expansion coefficient (TEC). We propose that there is a competitive relation between the intrinsic TEC and the friction from the substrate and the graphene. Lastly, in collaboration with Dr. Nikolai Kalugin from New Mexico Tech., we explore the graphene's application as a quantum Hall effect infrared photodetector. This graphene-based detector can be operated at higher temperature (liquid nitrogen) and wider frequency than the previous implementations of quantum Hall detector.