Recent experiments demonstrated that proton transport through graphene electrodes can be accelerated by over an order of magnitude with low intensity illumination. Here we show that this photo-effect can be suppressed for a tuneable fraction of the infrared spectrum by applying a voltage bias. Using photocurrent measurements and Raman spectroscopy, we show that such fraction can be selected by tuning the Fermi energy of electrons in graphene with a bias, a phenomenon controlled by Pauli blocking of photo-excited electrons. These findings demonstrate a dependence between graphene's electronic and proton transport properties and provide fundamental insights into molecularly thin electrode-electrolyte interfaces and their interaction with light.
@article{arxiv.2310.08105,
title = {Gate-controlled suppression of light-driven proton transport through graphene electrodes},
author = {S. Huang and E. Griffin and J. Cai and B. Xin and J. Tong and Y. Fu and V. Kravets and F. M. Peeters and M. Lozada-Hidalgo},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2310.08105},
year = {2023}
}