In this work, we study the effects of self-heating (Joule heating) on the performance of graphene field-effect transistors (GFETs) with high extrinsic transit frequency (ft) and maximum frequency of oscillation (fmax) [1]. It has been shown, that self-heating in the GFETs might be significant and lead to degradation of the output characteristics with potential effects on the ft and fmax [2,3,4]. Due to relatively short gate length of 0.5 μm in the GFETs, used in this work, the local channel temperature cannot be accurately estimated by means of the infrared microscopy. Therefore, we applied the method of thermosensitive electrical parameters [5]. In particular, we analysed the gate and drain currents in response to variations of the external heater temperature and dc power (Fig. 1). The analysis allows for estimation of the thermal resistance, which is, for GFETs on SiO2/Si substrates, approx. 2e4 K/W, and in good agreement with that calculated by the model based on the solution of Laplace’s equation [6]. In turn, the known thermal resistance allows for evaluation of the GFET channel self-heating temperature. Fig. 2 shows the fmax versus dc power (Pdiss) at different external heater temperatures. The self-heating temperature at Pdiss =10 mW is approx. 130 \ub0C. The drop in the fmax at higher Pdiss can be fully explained by self-heating. Apparently, one can expect reduced self-heating effects in the GFETs on higher thermal conductive substrates as hBN or SiC
