Irradiation of graphene field effect transistors with highly charged ions

In this work, graphene field-effect transistors are used to detect defects due to irradiation with slow, highly charged ions. In order to avoid contamination effects, a dedicated ultra-high vacuum set up has been designed and installed for the in situ cleaning and electrical characterization of graphene field-effect transistors during irradiation. To investigate the electrical and structural modifications of irradiated graphene field-effect transistors, their transfer characteristics as well as the corresponding Raman spectra are analyzed as a function of ion fluence for two different charge states. The irradiation experiments show a decreasing mobility with increasing fluences. The mobility reduction scales with the potential energy of the ions. In comparison to Raman spectroscopy, the transport properties of graphene show an extremely high sensitivity with respect to ion irradiation: a significant drop of the mobility is observed already at fluences below 15 ions/μm2, which is more than one order of magnitude lower than what is required for Raman spectroscopy.