A New Type of Self-Aligned Technology for RF and Microwave Graphene Field-Effect Transistors

Abstract:

A new type of fully self-aligned technology for graphene field-effect transistors was presented, in which a PVD SiO₂ layer was taken as mask for the deposition of self-aligned source, drain and gate contacts. In this key process, the dielectric edge-sides exposure phenomenon during metal thermal evaporation was exploited. In the prepared self-aligned GFETs, both parasitic capacitance of the gate overlapped source and drain areas and series resistance of the spacing areas between gate and source and drain contacts were eliminated. The DC characterization and on-chip microwave measurement of the fabricated GFETs with channel length of 1give a maximum transconductanceof 2.32,field-effect mobilities of electrons and holes of 6924and 7035, and intrinsic cutoff frequencyof 0.5GHz, respectively, showing a significant improvement of both DC and RF performance.

• Periodical: Materials Science Forum (Volume 815)
• Pages: 36-43
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/MSF.815.36
• Online since: March 2015
• Authors: Yong Wu*, Zhong Fa Ma, Lei Du, Peng Zhang, Liang He
• Keywords: Field-Effect Transistor (FET), Graphene, Radio Frequency (RF), Self-Aligned Process

References

[1] Novoselov K S, Geim A K, Morozov S V, Jiang D, Zhang Y, Dubonos S V, Grigorieva I V, Firsov A A. Electric field effect in atomically thin carbon films[J]. Science, 2004, 306: 666–669.

DOI: 10.1126/science.1102896

[2] Castro Neto A H, Guinea F, Peres N M R, Novoselov K S, Geim A K. The electronic properties of graphene[J]. Rev Mod Phys, 2009, 81: 109-162.

DOI: 10.1103/revmodphys.81.109

[3] Max C L, Tim J E, Matthias B, Heinrich K. A graphene Field-effect device[J]. IEEE Electron Device Letters, 2007, 28(4): 282-284.

[4] Lin Y M, Jenkins K A, Alberto V G, J P S, Damon B F, Avouris P. Operation of graphene transistors at gigahertz frequencies[J]. Nano Letters, 2009, 9(1): 422-426.

DOI: 10.1021/nl803316h

[5] Meng N, Ferrer F J, Vignaud D, Dambrine G, Henri H. 60GHz current gain cut-off frequency graphene nanoribbon FET[J]. International Journal of Microwave and Wireless Technologies, 2010, 2(5): 441-444.

DOI: 10.1017/s175907871000070x

[6] Lin Y M, Alberto V G, Han S J, Farmer D B, Meric I, Sun Y N, Wu Y Q, Dimitrakopoulos C, Grill A, Avouris P, Jenkins K A. Wafer-scale graphene integrated circuit[J]. Science, 2011 332(10): 1294-1297.

DOI: 10.1126/science.1204428

[7] Liao L, Lin Y C, Bao M Q, Cheng R, Bai J W, Liu Y, Qu Y Q, Wang K L, Huang Y, Duan X F. High-speed graphene transistors with self-aligned nanowire gate[J]. Nature Letters, 2010, 467(16), 305-308.

DOI: 10.1038/nature09405

[8] Farmer D B, Lin Y M, Avouris P. Graphene field-effect transistors with self-aligned gates[J]. Applied Physics Letters, 2010, 97, 013103.

DOI: 10.1063/1.3459972

[9] Wang Y J, Huang B C, Zhang M, Miao C Q, Xie Y H, Woo J C S. High performance graphene FETs with self-aligned buried gates fabricated on scalable patterned Ni-Catalyzed Graphene[A]. 2011 Symposium on VLSI Technology Digest of Technical Papers, IEEE press, 2011. 116-117.

DOI: 10.1109/icsict.2012.6467684

[10] Novoselov K S, Geim A K, Morozov S V, Jiang D, Katsnelson M I, Grigorieva I V, Dubonos S V, Firsov AA. Two-dimensional gas of massless Dirac fermions in graphene[J]. Nature, 2005, 438: 197-200.

DOI: 10.1038/nature04233

[11] Badmaev A, Che Y C, Li Z, Wang C, Zhou C W. Self-Aligned Fabrication of Graphene RF Transistors with T-Shaped Gate[J]. ACS Nano, 2012, 6 (4): 3371–3376.

DOI: 10.1021/nn300393c

[12] Robinson J A, LaBella M, Zhu M, Hollander M, Kasarda R, Hughes Z, Trumbull K, Cavalero R, Snyder D. Contacting graphene[J]. Applied Physics Letters, 2011, 98: 053103.

DOI: 10.1063/1.3549183

[13] Dragoman M, Neculoiu D, Dragoman D, Deligeorgis G, Konstantinidis G, Cismaru A, Coccetti F, Plana R. Graphene for Microwaves[J]. IEEE Microwave magazine, 2010, 10: 81-86.

DOI: 10.1109/mmm.2010.938568

[14] Deligeorgis G, Neculoiu D, Dragoman D, Konstantinidis G, Cismaru A, Plana R. Microwave field effect transistor based on graphene[A]. Semiconductor Conference(CAS) 2010 International, IEEE press, 2010. 279-282.

DOI: 10.1109/smicnd.2010.5650730

[15] Pallecchi E, Benz C, Betz A C, Lohneysen H V, Placais B, Danneau R. Graphene microwave transistors on sapphire substrates[J]. Applied Physics Letters, 2011, 99: 113502.

DOI: 10.1063/1.3633105

[16] Wang H, Taychatanapat T, Hsu A, Watanabe K, Taniguchi T, Pablo J H, Palacios T. BN/Graphene/BN Transistors for RF Applications[J]. IEEE Electron Device Letters, 2011, 32(9): 1209-1211.

DOI: 10.1109/led.2011.2160611