AIP Advances (May 2022)

A method to fabricate nanoscale gaps in graphene nano-constrictions by electrical breakdown

  • Oliver Schmuck,
  • Davide Beretta,
  • Roman Furrer,
  • Jacopo Oswald,
  • Michel Calame

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0087564
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 12, no. 5
pp. 055312 – 055312-7

Abstract

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This work reports on a method to open nanoscale gaps in h-shaped graphene nano-constrictions by electrical breakdown at room temperature and pressure below 10−5 mbar. The method was validated on 275 devices, fabricated on eight different chips, using Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD)-grown graphene from in-house production and from two commercial sources. The gap width was estimated by fitting the I–V traces after electrical breakdown with the Simmons model for the intermediate-voltage range. The statistics on the collected data demonstrates that the method results in normally distributed nanoscale gaps in h-shaped graphene nano-constrictions, with an estimated average width centered around 1 nm and a gap fabrication yield of 95%.