Nanoelectromechanical Temperature Sensor Based on Piezoresistive Properties of Suspended Graphene Film

Abstract

The substrate impurities scattering will lead to unstable temperature-sensitive behavior and poor linearity in graphene temperature sensors. And this can be weakened by suspending the graphene structure. Herein, we report a graphene temperature sensing structure, with suspended graphene membranes fabricated on the cavity and non-cavity SiO2/Si substrate, using monolayer, few-layer, and multilayer graphene. The results show that the sensor provides direct electrical readout from temperature to resistance transduction by the nano piezoresistive effect in graphene. And the cavity structure can weaken the substrate impurity scattering and thermal resistance effect, which results in better sensitivity and wide-range temperature sensing. In addition, monolayer graphene is almost no temperature sensitivity. And the few-layer graphene temperature sensitivity, lower than that of the multilayer graphene cavity structure (3.50%/°C), is 1.07%/°C. This work demonstrates that piezoresistive in suspended graphene membranes can effectively enhance the sensitivity and widen the temperature sensor range in NEMS temperature sensors.