Graphene transport properties upon exposure to PMMA processing and heat treatments

The evolution of graphene's electrical transport properties due to processing with the polymer polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) and heat are examined in this study. The use of stencil (shadow mask) lithography enables fabrication of graphene devices without the usage of polymers, chemicals or heat, allowing us to measure the evolution of the electrical transport properties during individual processing steps from the initial as-exfoliated to the PMMA-processed graphene.

Heating generally promotes the conformation of graphene to SiO2 and is found to play a major role for the electrical properties of graphene while PMMA residues are found to be surprisingly benign. In accordance with this picture, graphene devices with initially high carrier mobility tend to suffer a decrease in carrier mobility, while in contrast an improvement is observed for low carrier mobility devices.

We explain this by noting that flakes conforming poorly to the substrate will have a higher carrier mobility which will however be reduced as heat treatment enhance the conformation. We finally show the electrical properties of graphene to be reversible upon heat treatments in air up to 200°C.