We propose a high-yield (~ 90%) fabrication route to obtain suspended graphene devices. Importantly, we focus on the scalability of the process as well as its compatibility with existing Si technologies. To address these issues, we developed a fabrication scheme based on graphene grown by chemical vapor deposition (CVD).The most crucial step in the fabrication process relates to the etching of the underlying SiO2 substrate to suspend the graphene ribbons. It is often reported in the literature that at this stage, capillary forces can lead to the collapse of the graphene beams. We have found that apart from this effect, the quality of the interface between the etch mask and the substrate is key to successfully suspend graphene devices. Only when the quality of this interface was improved, were we able to achieve remarkably high yields of approximately 90%. Characterization by Raman spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM), performed after each step of fabrication, attested that our methodology does not impact the quality of the graphene.We have subsequently employed Raman spectroscopy to investigate doping and strain in our CVD graphene devices. While we did observe a strong p-type doping of graphene supported on SiO2 in air, doping alone cannot account for the observed spectra. Instead, we conclude that the measured graphene samples display a compressive internal strain, which does not fully relax during fabrication. We attribute this strain to the large temperature budget of the CVD process and to the rigid transfer polymer.
展开▼
