Chemical sensing with graphene: A quantum field theory perspective

Abstract

We studied theoretically the effect of a low concentration of adsorbed polar molecules on the optical conductivity of graphene, within the Kubo linear response approximation. Our analysis is based on a continuum model approximation that includes up to next-to-nearest neighbors in the pristine graphene effective Hamiltonian. Our results show that the conductivity can be expressed in terms of renormalized quasiparticle parameters vF , M , and μ that include the effect of the molecular surface concentration ndip and dipolar moment P, thus providing a quantum field theory approach to model a graphene-based chemical sensor.