Frictional Drag Effect between Massless and Massive Fermions in Single-Layer/Bilayer Graphene Heterostructures

The emergence of two-dimensional layered materials offers an excellent opportunity for the fabrication of double-layer electron systems that are in close proximity but electronically isolated. In this work, heterostructures consisting of one single-layer graphene (SLG) and one bilayer graphene (BLG) separated by an ultrathin hBN layer are successfully fabricated, enabling the experimental investigation of the interlayer frictional drag effect between massless and massive fermions. With varying carrier densities, a giant positive peak of drag response emerges at the double neutrality point, around which nonmonotonic temperature dependent behaviors of drag resistance are further observed. These observations can be attributed to the anticorrelations in the distributions of e-h puddles between layers. More importantly, as the system shifts toward the strong coupling regime, the carrier density dependence of drag resistance R_drag shows a crossover from 1/n³ to 1/n² for the density matched cases, which is a unique characteristic predicted for massless-massive fermion systems. Consequently, a generalized carrier dependent expression (1/(|n_S| + |n_B|)²) is obtained for the strong coupling regime, where n_S and n_B are the carrier densities of SLG and BLG, respectively. Our study provides insight into the electronic frictional effects between massless and massive fermions and thus will promote the investigations of interlayer interactions in hybrid structures hosting different types of carriers.