Introduction to Graphene Electronics -- A New Era of Digital Transistors and Devices

Abstract

The speed of silicon-based transistors has reached an impasse in the recent decade, primarily due to scaling techniques and the short-channel effect. Conversely, graphene (a revolutionary new material possessing an atomic thickness) has been shown to exhibit a promising value for electrical conductivity. Graphene would thus appear to alleviate some of the drawbacks associated with silicon-based transistors. It is for this reason why such a material is considered one of the most prominent candidates to replace silicon within nano-scale transistors. The major crux here, is that graphene is intrinsically gapless, and yet, transistors require a band-gap pertaining to a well-defined ON/OFF logical state. Therefore, exactly as to how one would create this band-gap in graphene allotropes is an intensive area of growing research. Existing methods include nano-ribbons, bilayer and multi-layer structures, carbon nanotubes, as well as the usage of the graphene substrates. Graphene transistors can generally be classified according to two working principles. The first is that a single graphene layer, nanoribbon or carbon nanotube can act as a transistor channel, with current being transported along the horizontal axis. The second mechanism is regarded as tunneling, whether this be band-to-band on a single graphene layer, or vertically between adjacent graphene layers. The high-frequency graphene amplifier is another talking point in recent research, since it does not require a clear ON/OFF state, as with logical electronics. This paper reviews both the physical properties and manufacturing methodologies of graphene, as well as graphene-based electronic devices, transistors, and high-frequency amplifiers from past to present studies. Finally, we provide possible perspectives with regards to future developments.

This is an updated version of our review article, due to be published in Contemporary Physics (Sept 2013). Included are updated references, along with a few minor corrections. (45 pages, 19 figures)

References in corpus (28)

• Electric Field Effect in Atomically Thin Carbon Films
• Two Dimensional Atomic Crystals
• Universal Dynamic Conductivity and Quantized Visible Opacity of Suspended Graphene
• Ultrahigh electron mobility in suspended graphene
• The structure of suspended graphene sheets
• Chiral tunneling and the Klein paradox in graphene
• Electrochemically Top Gated Graphene: Monitoring Dopants by Raman Scattering
• Ultrathin epitaxial graphite: 2D electron gas properties and a route toward graphene-based nanoelectronics
• Giant Intrinsic Carrier Mobilities in Graphene and Its Bilayer
• Suspended Graphene: a bridge to the Dirac point
• Intrinsic and Extrinsic Performance Limits of Graphene Devices on SiO2
• Room-Temperature Quantum Hall Effect in Graphene
• Field-effect tunneling transistor based on vertical graphene heterostructures
• Vertical Field Effect Transistor based on Graphene-WS2 Heterostructures for flexible and transparent electronics
• Electrically Tunable Band Gap in Silicene
• Spin qubits in graphene quantum dots
• Thermal Properties of Isotopically Engineered Graphene
• Epitaxial graphene
• Multicomponent fractional quantum Hall effect in graphene
• Interaction phenomena in graphene seen through quantum capacitance
• Gate-controlled Guiding of Electrons in Graphene
• Unraveling the acoustic electron-phonon interaction in graphene
• Computational Study of Tunneling Transistor Based on Graphene Nanoribbon
• Magnetospectroscopy of epitaxial few-layer graphene
• Fluorescence of laser created electron-hole plasma in graphene
• Searching for confined modes in graphene channels: the variable phase method
• Conductance anomaly near the Lifshitz transition in strained bilayer graphene
• Transport in Graphene Tunnel Junctions

Cited by in corpus (15)

• Current-Voltage Characteristics of Weyl Semimetal Semiconducting Devices, Veselago Lenses and Hyperbolic Dirac Phase
• One-dimensional Coulomb problem in Dirac materials
• Localization of massless Dirac particles via spatial modulations of the Fermi velocity
• Optical Transistor for an Amplification of Radiation in a Broadband THz Domain
• Floquet spectrum and driven conductance in Dirac materials: Effects of Landau-Zener-Stückelberg-Majorana interferometry
• The emergence of quantum capacitance in epitaxial graphene
• Braiding of edge states in narrow zigzag graphene nanoribbons: effect of the third neighbors hopping
• Rashba-splitting of the Dirac points and the symmetry breaking in the strained artificial graphene
• Magnetic field effect on tunneling through triple barrier in AB bilayer graphene
• Graphene Field Effect Transistors: A Review
• Physical Properties of Zener Tunnelling Nano-devices in Graphene
• SUSY design of smooth quantum rings in graphene
• Lorentzian quantum wells in graphene: the role of shape invariance in zero-energy states trapping
• Klein tunneling through triple barrier in AB bilayer graphene
• The soliton nature of the super-Klein tunneling effect