Electrical resistivity mapping of potassium-doped few-layer CVD graphene by EBAC measurements

Abstract

Abstract The electron beam absorbed current (EBAC) method identifies the open and/or short points in various semiconductor devices, which can be applied to characterize the current path and local resistance in graphene. In this study, potassium (K)-doped few-layer graphene with inhomogeneous K atoms seemed to be one of the appropriate materials to characterize the current path by EBAC. Nonuniform contrast in the EBAC image due to inhomogeneous local resistances is observed, which is explained by the variation of the Fermi level in the graphene channel from the G-band peak shifts from Raman spectroscopy. The changes in the contrast of the EBAC images are obtained by applying a gate voltage. These changes are attributed to the modulation of the local carrier densities by applying the gate voltage. For comparison, uniform contrast in EBAC images and uniform G-band peak positions of undoped few-layer graphene field effect transistors are confirmed. The obtained results suggest that homogeneous Fermi level leads to a uniform current path. EBAC enables us to evaluate the uniformity of local resistance and current through a pass in the graphene channel, which can be applied to other two-dimensional materials, such as transition metal dichalcogenides, graphene oxide, and hexagonal boron nitride.