Towards transfer-free fabrication of graphene NEMS grown by chemical vapour deposition

Graphene, an atomic monolayer of sp²-hybridised carbon atoms, is a promising material for future NEMS based on its remarkable electronic and mechanical properties. Through the rapid progress of chemical vapour deposition of large-scale, high-quality graphene, these applications seem to be close to reality. However, issues related to the graphene transfer process limit the reproducibility of such devices. In this Letter, the authors present two different approaches for fabricating suspended graphene devices without any transfer step, using both catalytically and non-catalytically grown graphene. The authors achieve high reproducibility in manufacturing flat and uniform suspended graphene beams. While good mechanical properties are observed, the electrical performance is still poor, requiring improvements.