High performance metal–insulator–graphene diodes for radio frequency power detection application

Abstract

Vertical metal-insulator-graphene (MIG) diodes for radio frequency (RF) power detection are realized using a scalable approach based on graphene grown by chemical vapor deposition and TiO as barrier material. The temperature dependent current flow through the diode can be described by thermionic emission theory taking into account a bias induced barrier lowering at the graphene TiO interface. The diodes show excellent figures of merit for static operation, including high on-current density of up to 28 A cm, high asymmetry of up to 520, strong maximum nonlinearity of up to 15, and large maximum responsivity of up to 26 V, outperforming state-of-the-art metal-insulator-metal and MIG diodes. RF power detection based on MIG diodes is demonstrated, showing a responsivity of 2.8 V W at 2.4 GHz and 1.1 V W at 49.4 GHz.

Flexible One-Dimensional Metal–Insulator–Graphene Diode

“…[1][2][3][4][5] Thin-film technology based diodes such as metal-insulatormetal (MIM) diodes or 2-dimensional (2D) material based metal-insulator-graphene (MIG) diodes are attracting increasing research interests over the past years, due to their high performance and thin-film fabrication process on rigid or flexible substrate. [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] Moreover, MIG diodes are also used as building blocks to realize different circuits, such as mixers, power detectors, RF receivers etc. [17][18][19][20][21] In MIM or MIG diodes, the junction is defined by an insulating barrier layer either between two metal layers with different work functions (in the case of MIM diodes) or between one metal layer and one graphene layer (in the case of MIG diodes).…”

Graphene in 2D/3D Heterostructure Diodes for High Performance Electronics and Optoelectronics

“…The MIG diodes shown here reach a maximum current density of 7.5 A cm −2 , compared to 2.0 A cm −2 for a Nb/Nb 2 O 5 (5 nm)/Pt MIM diode, which is the state‐of‐the‐art performance with respect to current density for MIM diodes [ 30,37 ] At the same time, the MIG diodes also outperform Nb/Nb 2 O 5 (5 nm)/Pt MIM diodes in terms of responsivity with a typical value of 26 V −1 for MIG diodes compared to 16.9 V −1 of MIM devices, asymmetry (520 compared to 9.8) and nonlinearity (15 compared to 8.2). [ 30,37 ] If the thickness of the Nb 2 O 5 increases to 15 nm, the current level decreases drastically, although other FOMs are enhanced. [ 7 ] A detailed comparison of all relevant diode characteristics between MIG diodes and state‐of‐the‐art MIM diodes is shown in Table 1.…”

“…This bias‐dependent barrier height modulation has been simulated previously. [ 30 ] This mechanism enhances the asymmetry of both thermionic and tunneling currents, increasing also the nonlinearity, responsivity and on‐currents. [ 27 ]…”

A Graphene Field-Effect Transistor Based Analogue Phase Shifter for High-Frequency Applications

“…However, due to the absence of band gap in graphene and its consequent inability (at the device level) to be effectively turned off, this progress has been especially notorious in the field of RF electronics. Some examples of the main advancements can be found among radio-frequency (RF) power detection applications [11], high-frequency (HF) transmission lines [12], RF low power applications [13], fifth-generation (5G) antenna arrays [14], or printed sensing applications for the Internet of Things (IoT) [15]. However, in the RF field, there are still some electronics components that indeed play an essential role in multiple communication systems embedded in radars or satellites [16]- [18], that remain unexplored.…”