Graphene: one atom thick material with exciting potential!

Aixtron announced today that it has received a purchase order for a 6" Black Magic Plasma Enhanced CVD (PECVD) system for graphene and carbon nanotube (CNT) growth from the University of California (UCSB).

This combined thermal CVD and plasma enhanced CVD tool is planned to be delivered in first quarter 2010 to Professor Kaustav Banerjee, who directs the Nanoelectronics Research Lab at UCSB. The PECVD system uses unique rapid heating and plasma technologies that is used to produce various types of nanotubes, including low temperature, multiwall, singlewall and supergrowth nanotubes.

Researchers from Sweden and the US have produced a new transparent lighting component that is made from Graphene. They say it is cheap to make and fully recyclable, and might be an alternative to OLED Lighting. The new device is called an Organic Light-emitting Electrochemical Cell, or LEC. The Graphene is used for an electrode. 

LECs can be made using a roll-to-roll process, because all of its parts can be made from liquid solutions.

Via AzoNano

IBM Research has fabricated new 100-Ghz Graphene RF-transistors on 2" wafers. IBM says that the transistors, which operate at room temperature are the fastest available expect the fastest GaAs transistors, and are more than twice faster than silicon transistors with the same gate length (40Ghz). IBM's next aim is to increase the speed of the Graphene transistor to 1 Thz.

The Graphene RF transistors were created for the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency under its Carbon Electronics for RF Applications (CERA) program. The transistors were fabricated at the wafer scale using epitaxially grown graphene processing techniques that are compatible with those used to fabricate silicon transistors.

Via EETimes

Penn State researchers say that have developed a method of fabricating pure sheets of Graphene on 100 millimeter wafers. They are using silicon sublimation which thermally removes silicon from silicon carbide wafers leaving behind pure graphene. They say that this process can be used to make Graphene chips that are 100 to 1000 times faster than silicon, and also enable other applications such as sensors, displays, solar cells and more.

Via EETimes

Associate Professor Chun Ning (Jeanie) Lau, who is investigating the electrical properties of graphene coupled to normal and superconducting electrodes at the University of California was one of 100 recipients of the PECASE award for early-stage scientists. The award ceremony was in the East room of the White House, and the scientists were greeted by President Barack Obama.

Via Nanowerk

IBM Researchers has opened a bandgap for graphene field-effect transistors (FET) that could someday rival complementary metal oxide semiconductor. This is one of the last roadblocks to commercialization of Graphene-based technology, according to IBM. 

Graphene has a higher carrier mobility than Silicon, but lacks a band gap, which has kept the on-off ratio of graphene transistors dismally low—usually less than 10 compared to hundreds for silicon. Now IBM says that they have managed to create a tunable electrical bandgap (up to 130meV) for their bi-layer graphene FETs. And larger bandgaps are possible, too. 

Next, IBM plans to begin optimizing its design by scaling down the thickness of its insulating layers in order to achieve even higher electric fields, to open a wider band gap, and to further improve the on-off current ratios of graphene FETs.

Via EETimes

A collaborative research project in Europe has succeeded in producing and operating a large number of electronic devices from a sizable area of graphene layers (approximately 50 mm2). The graphene sample, was produced epitaxially - a process of growing one crystal layer on another - on silicon carbide. Having such a significant sample not only proves that it can be done in a practical, scalable way, but also allowed the scientists to better understand important properties.

The second key breakthrough of the project was measuring graphene's electrical characteristics with unprecedented precision, paving the way for convenient and accurate standards to be established. For products such as transistors in computers to work effectively and be commercially viable, manufacturers must be able to make such measurements with incredible accuracy against an agreed international standard.

Read more here