A novel temperature sensor based on three-dimensional buried-gate graphene field effect transistor

Temperature sensor is one of the primarily developed and most proverbially utilized sensors. Owing to the limitations of their characteristics (stability, thermal conductivity, and thermal contact area), traditional temperature sensors may exhibit drawbacks of high production cost and large volume. In this paper, a three-dimensional (3D) buried-gate graphene field effect transistors (GFETs) are proposed as a novel sensor for temperature detection, which possess a 3D microtube structure by self-rolled-up technology. Compared to conventional two-dimensional (2D) devices, the 3D devices would have tinier area and higher integration. Two main reasons that would affect the resistance of the graphene are the graphene electro-phonon coupling and the thermal expansion effect. In addition, by applying the COMSOL Multiphysics software, it has been demonstrated that the microtube would deform to a certain extent when the temperature increases. And the strain on the 3D devices is proved to be greater than that of the 2D devices. Experimental results show that 3D GFETs could realize temperature detection between 30 °C and 150 °C, and its resistance increases with temperature rising. Furthermore, the maximum achieved temperature coefficient of resistance (TCR) is 0.41% °C-1and the hysteresis error is only 3.85%. By virtue of the 3D microtube, not only more superior temperature detection could be achieved, but also more devices are integrated in unit area. The 3D temperature sensor possesses superior sensitivity, repeatability and stability, which contributes a new approach to develop the high-performance temperature sensor.