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.
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 lowâusually 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.
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.