Vacuum Annealed Cu contacts for graphene electronics

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that vacuum annealing significantly reduces contact resistance between copper and graphene, enabling better electrical contacts for graphene-based devices, especially in contaminated samples.

Contribution

It introduces a vacuum annealing method to lower contact resistance between Cu and graphene, highlighting its importance for future graphene electronics.

Findings

Vacuum annealing reduces Cu-graphene contact resistance.

Low resistance achieved even in contaminated contacts.

Thermal annealing is crucial for non-perturbing graphene contacts.

Abstract

We present transfer-length-method measurements of the contact resistance between Cu and graphene, and a method to significantly reduce the contact resistance by vacuum annealing. Even in samples with heavily contaminated contacts, the contacts display very low contact resistance post annealing. Due to the common use of Cu, and it's low chemical reactivity with graphene, thermal annealing will be important for future graphene devices requiring non-perturbing contacts with low contact resistance.