Advancing graphene for post-silicon computer logic: Researchers pioneer new approach for graphene logic circuits

A team of researchers from the University of California, Riverside's Bourns College of Engineering have solved a problem that previously presented a serious hurdle for the use of graphene in electronic devices.

Scanning electron microscopy image of graphene device used in the study. The scale bar is one micrometer. The UCR logo next to it is implemented with etched graphene.

Graphene is a single-atom thick carbon crystal with unique properties beneficial for electronics including extremely high electron mobility and phonon thermal conductivity. However, graphene does not have an energy band gap, which is a specific property of semiconductor materials that separate electrons from holes and allows a transistor implemented with a given material to be completely switched off.

A transistor implemented with graphene will be very fast but will suffer from leakage currents and power dissipation while in the off state because of the absence of the energy band gap. Efforts to induce a band-gap in graphene via quantum confinement or surface functionalization have not resulted in a breakthrough. That left scientists wondering whether graphene applications in electronic circuits for information processing were feasible.

The UC Riverside team – Alexander Balandin and Roger Lake, both electrical engineering professors, Alexander Khitun, an adjunct professor of electrical engineering, and Guanxiong Liu and Sonia Ahsan, both of whom earned their Ph.Ds from UC Riverside while working on this research – has eliminated that doubt.