Since the discovery of graphene and realization of its exceptional electronic properties in suspended form, there have been many efforts in fabricating FET-type devices based on single and bilayer graphene on SiO2 substrate. However, performance of these devices is found to be inferior to the expected intrinsic properties of graphene. It has been observed that apart from carrier mobility in graphene, which is sensitive to trapped charges, and surface impurities at the graphene-oxide interface, breakdown current density in graphene depends sensitively on the heat dissipation property of the underlying supporting substrate. Although graphene has extremely high intrinsic thermal conductivity, it is reported that in graphene devices, more than 70% of the heat dissipates through the 300 nm SiO2 on silicon directly below the active graphene channel while the remainder is carried to the graphene that extends beyond the device and metallic contacts. Such a distribution of heat in to the substrate cause undesirable effects on the overall performance of the device. We show for the first time that by the use of thin CVD-grown ultrananocrystalline diamond thin films on silicon in graphene-on-diamond configuration, the heat dissipation can be improved substantially leading to the higher breakdown current density of more than 50% as compared to conventional graphene-on-oxide substrates. We also describe the fabrication of the top-gate graphene-on- diamond devices and discuss their performance. The obtained devices had the carrier mobility ~ 2354 cm2V-1S-1 for holes and ~1293 cm2V-1S-1 for electrons. The obtained results are promising for developing high-performance graphene-on-diamond devices and interconnects for future electronics.

Use of the Center for Nanoscale Materials was supported by the U. S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357. The work in Balandin group at UCR was supported, in part, by DARPA – SRC Center on Functional Engineered Nano Architectonics (FENA).