Mechanical cleaning of graphene

Contamination of graphene due to residues from nanofabrication often introduces background doping and reduces electron mobility. For samples of high electronic quality, post-lithography cleaning treatments are therefore needed. We report that mechanical cleaning based on contact mode atomic force microscopy removes residues and significantly improves the electronic properties. A mechanically cleaned dual-gated bilayer graphene transistor with hexagonal boron nitride dielectrics exhibited a mobility of ∼36 000 cm2/Vs at low temperature.