ESD characterization of atomically-thin graphene

A first-time study of ESD characterization of atomically-thin graphene is reported. In a material comprising only a few atomic layers, It2 reaches 4 mA/μm for 100 ns and ~8 mA/μm for 10 ns TLP or an equivalent current density of 2-3×10
⁸
A/cm
²
and 4.6×10
⁸
A/cm
²
, respectively. The fact that failure occurs within the graphene and not at the contacts indicates that intrinsic properties of this new material can be appropriately characterized by 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.