High-quality multi-terminal suspended graphene devices

Abstract

We introduce a new scheme to realize suspended, multi-terminal graphene structures that can be current annealed successfully to obtain uniform, very high quality devices. A key aspect is that the bulky metallic contacts are not connected directly to the part of graphene probed by transport measurements, but only through etched constriction, which prevents the contacts from acting invasively. The device high quality and uniformity is demonstrated by a reproducibly narrow (delta_n ~ 10^9 cm^-2) resistance peak around charge neutrality, by carrier mobility values exceeding 10^6 cm^2/V/s, by the observation of integer quantum Hall plateaus starting at 30 mT and of symmetry broken states at about 200 mT, and by the occurrence of a negative multi-terminal resistance directly proving the occurrence of ballistic transport. As these multi-terminal devices enable measurements that cannot be done in a simpler two-terminal configuration, we anticipate that their use in future studies of graphene-based systems will be particularly relevant.