Electric field induced injection and shift currents in zigzag graphene nanoribbons

We theoretically investigate the one-color injection currents and shift currents in zigzag graphene nanoribbons by applying a static electric field across the ribbon, which breaks the inversion symmetry to generate nonzero second-order optical responses by dipole interaction. These two types of currents can be separately excited by specific light polarization, circularly polarized lights for injection currents and linearly polarized lights for shift currents. Based on a tight binding model formed by carbon 2pz orbitals, we numerically calculate the spectra of injection coefficients and shift conductivities, as well as their dependence on the static field strength and ribbon width. The spectra show many peaks associated with the optical transition between different subbands, and the positions and amplitudes of these peaks can be effectively controlled by the static electric field. By constructing a simple two band model, the static electric fields are found to modify the edge states in a nonperturbative way, and their associated optical transitions dominate the current generation at low photon energies. For typical parameters, such as a static field 106 V/m and light intensity 0.1 GW/cm2, the magnitude of the injection and shift currents for a ribbon with width of 5 nm can be as large as the order of 1 μA. Our results provide a physical basis for realizing passive optoelectronic devices based on graphene nanoribbons.