On the Electrostatic Discharge Robustness of Graphene

A comprehensive study of electrostatic discharge (ESD) characterization of atomically thin graphene is reported. In a material comprising only a few atomic layers, the thermally destructive second breakdown transmission line pulsing (TLP) current (It2) reaches a remarkable 4 mA/μm for 100-ns TLP and ~8 mA/μm for 10-ns TLP or an equivalent current density of ~3 × 10⁸ and 4.6 × 10⁸ A/cm², respectively. For ~5-nm thick (~15 layers) graphene film, It2 reaches 7.4 mA/μm for 100-ns pulse. The fact that failure occurs within the graphene and not at the contacts indicates that intrinsic breakdown properties of this new material can be appropriately characterized using short-pulse stressing. Moreover, unique gate biasing effects are observed that can be exploited for novel applications including robust ESD protection designs for advanced semiconductor products. This demonstration of graphene´s outstanding robustness against high-current/ESD pulses also establishes its unique potential as transparent electrodes in a variety of applications.