Effect of defect-induced carrier scattering on the thermoelectric power of graphene

The thermoelectric properties of graphene are strongly related to the defect density, and as such, these can be used to investigate carrier scattering. In this study, the defect density was controlled by the use of oxygen plasma treatment. Oxygen plasma introduces structural defects into graphene, initially introducing sp³ defects that transform into vacancy-type defects with further exposure, as indicated by XPS analysis, and these transitions cause substantial changes in both the electrical and thermoelectric properties of graphene. In this work, we estimate the effects of both defect density and species, analyzed by Raman spectroscopy, on the thermoelectric power of graphene, and find that the maximum thermoelectric power decreases with increasing defect density. We also find, from Ioffe's semiclassical approximation, that at the lower defect densities, phonons are the predominant source of carrier scattering, while at higher defect densities, the scattering is mainly caused by charged impurities, which corresponds to a change in defect population from the sp³-type to vacancies.