Nanoscale contacts between semiconducting nanowires and metallic graphenes

Abstract

Here we report on the metal semiconductor junction characteristics of a semiconducting ZnO nanowire grown directly on a metallic graphene film. The extracted specific contact resistivity of the graphene ZnO nanowire contact (1.5 x 10(-5) Omega-cm(2)) is comparable to that reported for Al-ZnO contacts. Based on the assumption that thermionic-field emission is the dominant mechanism, we obtained a zero-bias effective barrier height of 0.413 eV for the graphene ZnO nanowire Schottky contact. We thus demonstrate that as a result of the enhanced tunneling at the contact, the graphene nanowire contact exhibits near-ohmic current voltage characteristics with a low contact resistance. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4745210]