▎ 摘　　要

We analyze the performance of graphene microstructures as thermal photon detectors and deduce the range of parameters that define a linear response. The saturation effects of a graphene thermal detector that operates beyond the linear range are described in detail for a single-photon detector (calorimeter). We compute the effect of operating beyond this linear range and find that sensitive detection occurs for such non-linear operation. We identify the optimum conditions and find that single-photon detection at terahertz frequencies should be feasible. (C) 2013 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4789360]