Electrical Characteristics of Single Layer Graphene Ribbons in a Wide Temperature Range

Abstract

This paper provides electrical characterization of single layer graphene ribbon devices defined as back-gated graphene transistors. The two-terminal back-gated graphene ribbon devices were fabricated on a conventional Si substrate covered by a 90 nm-thick thermal SiO₂. The chemical vapor deposition process was used for the graphene layer deposition and its quality was checked with optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy and Raman spectroscopy. For the device fabrication, optical lithography was used for electrode patterns through a mask, and Ti/Au (10 nm/100 nm) metallic contacts were deposited by thermal evaporation. We report low and high field electrical measurements of several devices, under a controlled environment over a wide temperature range, from 77 to 300 K. At 77 K, the drain current decreases, i.e. the resistance of the graphene increases, and the nonlinearity is still present. The maximum influence of the temperature is reached at the charges neutrality point, and we observe that the temperature could influence the position of the charge neutrality point. This indicates that the carriers are thermally activated, which yields a least pronounced current with the increase of the back gate voltage.