Effects of Plasma Treatment on Contact Resistance and Sheet Resistance of Graphene FET

We investigated the effect of capacitively coupled Ar plasma treatment on contact resistance ($R_c$) and channel sheet resistance ($R_{sh}$) of graphene field effect transistors (FETs), by varying their channel length in the wide range from 200 nm to $50{\mu}m$ which formed the transfer length method (TLM) patterns. When the Ar plasma treatment was performed on the long channel ($10{\sim}50{\mu}m$) graphene FETs for 20 s, $R_c$ decreased from 2.4 to $1.15k{\Omega}{\cdot}{\mu}m$. It is understood that this improvement in $R_c$ is attributed to the formation of $sp^3$ bonds and dangling bonds by the plasma. However, when the channel length of the FETs decreased down to 200 nm, the drain current ($I_d$) decreased upon the plasma treatment because of the significant increase of channel $R_{sh}$ which was attributed to the atomic structural disorder induced by the plasma across the transfer length at the edge of the channel region. This study suggests a practical guideline to reduce $R_c$ using various plasma treatments for the $R_c$ sensitive graphene and other 2D material devices, where $R_c$ is traded off with $R_{sh}$.