Contact-independent measurement of electrical conductance of a thin film with a nanoscale sensor.

Contact effects are a common impediment to electrical measurements throughout the fields of nanoelectronics, organic electronics, and the emerging field of graphene electronics. We demonstrate a novel method of measuring electrical conductance in a thin film of amorphous germanium that is insensitive to contact effects. The measurement is based on the capacitive coupling of a nanoscale metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) to the thin film so that the MOSFET senses charge diffusion in the film. We tune the contact resistance between the film and contact electrodes and show that our measurement is unaffected. With the MOSFET, we measure the temperature and field dependence of the conductance of the amorphous germanium, which are fit to a model of variable-range hopping. The device structure enables both a contact-independent and a conventional, contact-dependent measurement, which makes it possible to discern the effect of the contacts in the latter measurement. This measurement method can be used for reliable electrical characterization of new materials and to determine the effect of contacts on conventional electron transport measurements, thus guiding the choice of optimal contact materials.