Highly Air Stable Passivation of Graphene Based Field Effect Devices

What is it about?

Graphene based devices have shown outstanding electrical and optical performances. However, the properties of graphene devices are extremely sensitive to environmental factors, such as humidity or gas composition, making a reproducible operation in normal atmosphere impossible so far. The technology developed in this paper demonstrated a sophisticated encapsulation technique utilizing Al2O3 enabling highly reproducible operation of graphene devices in normal atmosphere for several months.

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Why is it important?

Al2O3 has been used effectively in OLEDs, but there are difficulties growing it on graphene due to its hydrophobic surface. Hence a nucleation layer of Al was deposited by e-beam evaporation and oxidized it in-situ. This makes the growth of Al2O3 by ALD very uniform and form out performing permeation barrier layer. The process removes unintentional p-type doping in graphene. This layer also protect graphene from additional process steps during micro fabrication.