  Establishing good electrical contacts to nanoscale devices is a major issue
for modern technology and contacting 2D materials is no exception to the rule.
One-dimensional edge-contacts to graphene were recently shown to outperform
surface contacts but the method remains difficult to scale up. We report a
resist-free and scalable method to fabricate few graphene layers with
electrical contacts in a single growth step. This method derives from the
discovery reported here of the growth of few graphene layers on a metallic
carbide by thermal annealing of a carbide forming metallic film on SiC in high
vacuum. We exploit the combined effect of edge-contact and partially-covalent
surface epitaxy between graphene and the metallic carbide to fabricate devices
in which low contact-resistance and Josephson effect are observed. Implementing
this approach could significantly simplify the realization of large-scale
graphene circuits.
