Evidence for Local Spots of Viscous Electron Flow in Graphene at Moderate Mobility.

Dominating electron-electron scattering enables viscous electron flow exhibiting hydrodynamic current density patterns, such as Poiseuille profiles or vortices. The viscous regime has recently been observed in graphene by nonlocal transport experiments and mapping of the Poiseuille profile. Herein, we probe the current-induced surface potential maps of graphene field-effect transistors with moderate mobility using scanning probe microscopy at room temperature. We discover micrometer-sized large areas appearing close to charge neutrality that show current-induced electric fields opposing the externally applied field. By estimating the local scattering lengths from the gate dependence of local in-plane electric fields, we find that electron-electron scattering dominates in these areas as expected for viscous flow. Moreover, we suppress the inverted fields by artificially decreasing the electron-disorder scattering length via mild ion bombardment. These results imply that viscous electron flow is omnipresent in graphene devices, even at moderate mobility.

Equal variations of the Fermi level and work function in graphene at the nanoscale.

If surface effects are neglected, any change of the Fermi level in a semiconductor is expected to result in an equal and opposite change of the work function. However, this is in general not observed in three-dimensional semiconductors, because of Fermi level pinning at the surface. By combining Kelvin probe force microscopy and scanning tunneling spectroscopy on single layer graphene, we measure both the local work function and the charge carrier density. The one-to-one equivalence of changes in the Fermi level and the work function is demonstrated to accurately hold in single layer graphene down to the nanometer scale.