Specially designed transmission electron microscopy (TEM) sample carriers have been developed to enable atomically resolved studies of the heat-induced evolution of adsorbates on graphene and their influence on electrical conductivity. Here, we present a strategy for graphene-based carrier realization, evaluating its design with respect to fabrication effort and applications potential. We demonstrate that electrical current can lead to very high temperatures in suspended graphene membranes, and we determine that current-induced cleaning of graphene results from Joule heating.

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Nanocrystalline diamond is an interesting material for MEMS applications especially due to its outstanding mechanical, electrical and electrochemical properties. The current choice for doping is boron, resulting in p‐type conduction. It has two difficulties: firstly, at high concentration (as needed for full activation) the lattice becomes highly stressed and may degrade the material's quality. Secondly, it contaminates the growth chamber, resulting in a memory effect. A recent alternative is n‐type nitrogen doping, avoiding these disadvantages. However, nitrogen is mainly incorporated in the grain boundaries and thus inhomogeneously distributed. In turn this may limit the material's stability. Here we present a first trial to use nitrogen‐doped nanocrystalline diamond (NCD), grown by hot filament CVD, in a water microjet as heater element. No stability problems were encountered even at high overdrive power. (© 2006 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)

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