Direct observation of resistive heating at graphene wrinkles and grain boundaries

Journal Article · Wed Jan 01 00:00:00 EST 2014 · Applied Physics Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4896676· OSTI ID:1159490

Grosse, Kyle L. ^[1]; Dorgan, Vincent E. ^[2]; Estrada, David ^[2]; Wood, Joshua D. ^[2]; Vlassiouk, Ivan V ^[3]; Eres, Gyula ^[3]; Lyding, Joseph W ^[2]; King, William P. ^[2]; Pop, Eric ^[4]

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1. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
2. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana-Champaign
3. ORNL
4. Stanford University

We directly measure the nanometer-scale temperature rise at wrinkles and grain boundaries (GBs) in functioning graphene devices by scanning Joule expansion microscopy with 50 nm spatial and 0.2K temperature resolution. We observe a small temperature increase at select wrinkles and a large (100 K) temperature increase at GBs between coalesced hexagonal grains. Comparisons of measurements with device simulations estimate the GB resistivity (8 150 X lm) among the lowest reported for graphene grown by chemical vapor deposition. An analytical model is developed, showing that GBs can experience highly localized resistive heating and temperature rise, most likely affecting the reliability of graphene devices. Our studies provide an unprecedented view of thermal effects surrounding nanoscale defects in nanomaterials such as graphene.

• Research Organization: Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC)
• DOE Contract Number: DE-AC05-00OR22725
• OSTI ID: 1159490
• Journal Information: Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 105, Issue 14; ISSN 0003--6951
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

graphene
grain boundary
thermal conductivity