Large Scale Fabrication of Graphene Based Nano‐Electromechanical (NEM) Contact Switches with Sub‐0.5 Volt Actuation

Abstract

AbstractNano‐electromechanical (NEM) contact switches are extensively studied to suppress the limitations of conventional complementary metal‐oxide‐semiconductor (CMOS) transistors. The attributes of NEM contact switches includes reduced power consumption, reduced off‐state leakage current, and increased on‐state current and sub‐thermal switching. However, unacceptably high pull‐in voltage and low contact lifetime posed a significant challenge for the use of NEM contact switches in energy efficient CMOS applications. Here, graphene‐based electro‐statically actuated NEM contact switches with ultra‐low pull‐in voltage and significant improvement in the contact lifetime are demonstrated. This is achieved by using the graphene on gold electrode as a contact material. The graphene NEM contact switches with graphene as a contact material exhibit an ultra‐low pull‐in voltage of < 0.5 V and high contact lifetime of more than 1.5× 106 cycles. The switches also show an excellent switching performance with high on/off ratio of ≈108, an extremely low off‐state current of ≈100 fA, and small hysteresis window of < 0.1 V.