The role of contact resistance in graphene field-effect devices

Abstract

The extremely high carrier mobility and the unique band structure, make graphene very useful for field-effect transistor applications. According to several works, the primary limitation to graphene based transistor performance is not related to the material quality, but to extrinsic factors that affect the electronic transport properties. One of the most important parasitic element is the contact resistance appearing between graphene and the metal electrodes functioning as the source and the drain. Ohmic contacts to graphene, with low contact resistances, are necessary for injection and extraction of majority charge carriers to prevent transistor parameter fluctuations caused by variations of the contact resistance. The International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors, toward integration and down-scaling of graphene electronic devices, identifies as a challenge the development of a CMOS compatible process that enables reproducible formation of low contact resistance. However, the contact resistance is still not well understood despite it is a crucial barrier towards further improvements. In this paper, we review the experimental and theoretical activity that in the last decade has been focusing on the reduction of the contact resistance in graphene transistors. We will summarize the specific properties of graphene-metal contacts with particular attention to the nature of metals, impact of fabrication process, Fermi level pinning, interface modifications induced through surface processes, charge transport mechanism, and edge contact formation.

70 pages, 18 figures, review article, Accepted for publication in "Progress in Surface Science"

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Cited by in corpus (29)

• Hysteresis in the transfer characteristics of MoS2 transistors
• Asymmetric Schottky Contacts in Bilayer MoS2 Field Effect Transistors
• Integrating Graphene into Semiconductor Fabrication Lines
• Nanoelectromechanical Sensors based on Suspended 2D Materials
• Pressure-Tunable Ambipolar Conduction and Hysteresis in Ultrathin Palladium Diselenide Field Effect Transistors
• HBN-encapsulated, graphene-based room-temperature terahertz receivers with high speed and low noise
• A current-voltage model for double Schottky barrier devices
• Gas dependent hysteresis in MoS${}_2$ field effect transistors
• Graphene-Silicon Schottky diodes for photodetection
• Effect of Electron Irradiation on the Transport and Field Emission Properties of Few-Layer MoS2 Field Effect Transistors
• Environmental effects on the electrical characteristics of back-gated WSe2 field effect transistors
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• Graphene enhanced field emission from InP nanocrystals
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• A Graphene Field-Effect Transistor Based Analogue Phase Shifter for High-Frequency Applications
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• Does carrier velocity saturation help to enhance fmax in graphene field-effect transistors?
• Investigation of laser-induced-metal phase of ${\mathrm{MoTe}}_2$ and its contact property via scanning gate microscopy
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