Contact resistance

About: Contact resistance is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 15262 publications have been published within this topic receiving 232144 citations. The topic is also known as: electrical contact resistance & ECR.

Role of contacts in long-range protein conductance.

Abstract: Proteins are widely regarded as insulators, despite reports of electrical conductivity. Here we use measurements of single proteins between electrodes, in their natural aqueous environment to show that the factor controlling measured conductance is the nature of the electrical contact to the protein, and that specific ligands make highly selective electrical contacts. Using six proteins that lack known electrochemical activity, and measuring in a potential region where no ion current flows, we find characteristic peaks in the distributions of measured single-molecule conductances. These peaks depend on the contact chemistry, and hence, on the current path through the protein. In consequence, the measured conductance distribution is sensitive to changes in this path caused by ligand binding, as shown with streptavidin-biotin complexes. Measured conductances are on the order of nanosiemens over distances of many nanometers, orders of magnitude more than could be accounted for by electron tunneling. The current is dominated by contact resistance, so the conductance for a given path is independent of the distance between electrodes, as long as the contact points on the protein can span the gap between electrodes. While there is no currently known biological role for high electronic conductance, its dependence on specific contacts has important technological implications, because no current is observed at all without at least one strongly bonded contact, so direct electrical detection is a highly selective and label-free single-molecule detection method. We demonstrate single-molecule, highly specific, label- and background free-electronic detection of IgG antibodies to HIV and Ebola viruses.

Nonalloyed ohmic contacts on low‐temperature molecular beam epitaxial GaAs: Influence of deep donor band

Abstract: The Ohmic nature of the nonalloyed metal contact on molecular beam epitaxial GaAs grown at 200 °C was studied. The specific contact resistances at room temperature and 120 K were 1.5×10−3 and 7.0×10−1 Ω cm2, respectively. These values are anomalously low considering that the conduction‐band electron concentration in this material is less than 1011 cm−3 at room temperature. The experimental results indicate that the carrier transport at the metal/semiconductor interface is dominated by a dense (∼3×1019 cm−3) EL2‐like deep donor band, rather than the usual conduction band.

Ultra-low contact resistance in graphene devices at the Dirac point

Abstract: Contact resistance is one of the main factors limiting performance of short-channel graphene field-effect transistors (GFETs), preventing their use in low-voltage applications. Here we investigated the contact resistance between graphene grown by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) and different metals, and found that etching holes in graphene below the contacts consistently reduced the contact resistance, down to 23 m with Au contacts. This low contact resistance was obtained at the Dirac point of graphene, in contrast to previous studies where the lowest contact resistance was obtained at the highest carrier density in graphene (here 200 m was obtained under such conditions). The 'holey' Au contacts were implemented in GFETs which exhibited an average transconductance of 940 S m−1 at a drain bias of only 0.8 V and gate length of 500 nm, which out-perform GFETs with conventional Au contacts.

A micro variable inductor chip using MEMS relays

Abstract: An adjustable inductor which is digitally controlled by microrelays has been made using combined surface and bulk micromachining technology. The microrelays were fabricated using a TaSi/sub 2//SiO/sub 2/ bimorph cantilever beam, a gold-to-gold electrical contact, aluminum as sacrificial layer, and a combined electrostatic and thermal actuation mechanism. The silicon substrate underneath the inductor region was etched out to reduce the substrate eddy current loss. Sixteen different inductance values ranging from 2.5 nH to 324.8 nH were obtained using four microrelays. The minimum self-resonant frequency is 1.9 GHz. The lowest measured thermal power and electrostatic voltage for the combined actuation of microrelays are 8.0 mW and 20 V, respectively. The measured contact resistance is typically 0.6 to 0.8 ohms.

Modulating the charge injection in organic field-effect transistors: fluorinated oligophenyl self-assembled monolayers for high work function electrodes

Abstract: The rapid increase in charge carrier mobility in organic field-effect transistors (OFETs) in the past few years, with a number of reports >10 cm2 V−1 s−1, calls for a simultaneous improvement in charge injection at the electrode–semiconductor interface. Chemical modification of the electrodes with self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) allows the optimization of three key properties for lowering the contact resistance, thus fine-tuning the charge injection into OFET channels: the electrode work function, the surface energy of the modified electrodes and tunnelling resistance of the SAM. Understanding of the interplay of these properties is of vital importance for organic device design. In this paper, we report a model study based on the modulation of all three of these properties via chemisorption of fluorinated mono- or biphenylthiol molecules (PFBT and PF2BT, respectively) onto gold electrodes. Density functional theory simulations confirm the higher work function of the PFBT monolayers compared to PF2BT and provide evidence that this work function difference is entirely due to differences in the bond dipole to the gold surface. This observation is of importance for the development of future SAM molecules both for organic electronics and across the field of surface chemistry. Incorporation of these SAM-modified Au surfaces as the source and drain electrodes of an OFET with prototypical polymer semiconductors exhibiting different transport levels makes it possible to unravel the role of energetic alignment as well as surface energy and tunnelling resistance on the device performance. Interestingly, our results show that it is not always the high work function PFBT-modified electrodes that give the lowest contact resistance.