Mechanism for graphene-based optoelectronic switches by tuning surface plasmon-polaritons in monolayer graphene

It is shown that one can explore the optical conductivity of graphene, together with the ability of controlling its electronic density by an applied gate voltage, in order to achieve resonant coupling between an external electromagnetic radiation and surface plasmon-polaritons in the graphene layer. This opens the possibility of electrical control of the intensity of light reflected inside a prism placed on top of the graphene layer, by switching between the regimes of total reflection and total absorption. The predicted effect can be used to build graphene-based optoelectronic switches. © 2010 Europhysics Letters Association.