Graphene for radio frequency electronics and infrared thermal imaging

The aim of this thesis is two-fold: The first is to develop a reliable processing technology for CVD graphene devices for applications in graphene circuits, i.e. mixers, frequency multipliers and phase key shifters. The performance of current graphene circuits has been limited to below 1.5 GHz due to issues with contact resistances and materials quality. Through improved processing techniques and studies about interface preparation between graphene and metal contacts - we demonstrate improved graphene-metal interactions to allow for CVD-graphene based circuits operating at >10 GHz. The second part of this thesis involves exploring graphene as a new infrared photoactive and thermally sensitive material for sensors in the IR spectrum (80 meV < Eph < 250 meV), which have applications ranging from thermography and night vision systems to nanoscale chemical spectroscopy. In this thesis, we will focus on graphene's intrinsic detection mechanisms at much lower photon energies (~ 125 meV) and resolve experimentally the dominant infrared detection mechanism in graphene. We find in the infrared that graphene's electronically tunable Seebeck Coefficient (~50-100 [mu]V/K) dominates at very low photon energies making graphene suitable as a nanoscale thermal detector. Utilizing this design concept, we discuss graphene's suitability for infrared imaging, as well as, other thermal applications such as low cost transparent temperature sensors.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2015

Author dc:creator

• Hsu, Allen Long

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Tomás Palacios and Jing Kong.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/97801

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/97801