Environment-Dependent Radiation Tolerance of Graphene Transistors under Proton Irradiation

Abstract

Electronic devices based on two-dimensional materials are promising for application in space instrumentation because of their small size and low power consumption, and irradiation tolerance of these devices is required because of the existence of energetic particles in aerospace conditions. We investigate the performance degradation of graphene field effect transistors (GFETs) with 3 MeV protons by using an in situ irradiation facility. Our results indicate that GFET performance degraded severely at the ion fluence of 8 × 1011 cm –2. Surprisingly, although the performance of the proton-irradiated GFETs is difficult to recover in vacuum, it can nearly completely recover within hours when the GFET is moved into an air environment, indicating that the performance change is due to the charge accumulation in SiO2 under proton irradiation rather than the lattice damage of graphene. Our results have great importance for the application of 2D devices in aerospace and other radiative environments.

Study of High-Energy Proton Irradiation Effects in Top-Gate Graphene Field-Effect Transistors

“…The data reveal that oxygen doping due to X-ray irradiation increases the drain current and that dedoping and displacement damage produced by protons leads to an instantaneous drop in the drain current. Zhang Y. et al [17] irradiated GFETs with three MeV protons. The results show that the irradiation leads to charge accumulation at the graphene/SiO 2 interface, where the graphene exchanges charge with the adsorbed particles, compounding the accumulated charge.…”