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Article

Title: IBM Fabs Experimental Graphene FETs for Darpa RF Applications

Author: Johnson, R Colin Article Type: Company
Source: Electronic Engineering Times, n1496 p18(1) Publication Date: Oct 8, 2007
  ISSN: 0192-1541
URL of Publication: http://www.eet.com

IBM has fabricated graphene FETs with a single layer of carbon atoms on top of a silicon wafer. The technique is still ten years away from widespread commercialization, though IBM is working on RF applications. The performance of graphene FETs is not as good as carbon nanotubes, though electron mobility is better. Graphene 'is a zero-bandgap semi-metal' as its valence and construction bands overlap. IBM, however, opened a small bandgap between them by creating the transistor channel from 'a nanoribbon of graphene' only 20 nanometers wide. In the future, IBM hopes to shrink the width of the nanoribbon transistor channels to two nanometers. IBM used conventional e-beam lithography to fabricate the graphene FETs. The company needed to supercool the device that cut the nanoribbons, as they lack the well-defined edges of nanotubes, though it hopes to develop a room-temperature operation in the future. Analog graphene devices will have applicability in communications and radar, according to the manager of nanoscale science at the research center that developed the technology. Currently, IBM uses mechanical exfoliation to place graphene on the silicon wafer, though in the future it hopes to use a technique that produces 'a monolayer of pure carbon in graphene's crystalline lattice.'

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