Effect of Metal Contact and Rapid Thermal Annealing on Electrical Characteristics of Graphene Matrix

Development of graphene field effect transistors (GFETs) faces a serious challenge of graphene interface to the dielectric material. A single layer of intrinsic graphene has an average sheet resistance of the order of $1\text{–}5k\Omega /◻$. The intrinsic nature of graphene leads to higher contact resistance yielding into the outstanding properties of the material. We design a graphene matrix with minimized sheet resistance of $0.185\Omega /◻$ with Ag contacts. The developed matrices on silicon substrates provide a variety of transistor design options for subsequent fabrication. The graphene layer is developed over 400 nm nickel in such a way as to analyze hypersensitive electrical properties of the interface for exfoliation. This work identifies potential of the design in the applicability of few-layer GFETs with less process steps with the help of analyzing the effect of metal contact and post-process annealing on its electrical fabrication. (paper)