A physics based model of gate tunable metal-graphene contact resistance benchmarked against experimental data

The metal-graphene contact resistance is a technological bottleneck for the realization of viable graphene based electronics. We report a useful model to find the gate tunable components of this resistance determined by the sequential tunneling of carriers between the 3D-metal and 2D-graphene underneath followed by Klein tunneling to the graphene in the channel. This model quantifies the intrinsic factors that control that resistance, including the effect of unintended chemical doping. Our results agree with experimental results for several metals.