First Integrated Circuit on Graphene

Researchers at IBM have made a revolutionary breakthrough in hardware that could change the computer industry. The team has built the first integrated circuit based on graphene, this could lead all future projects to be made on graphene as opposed to silicon wafers. The circuit is a 10 gigahertz frequency mixer and could potentially give wireless devices a larger span of reach.

Graphene is a revolutionary material in and of itself. Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work with two dimensional material graphene.

Graphene is an atomic-scale honeycomb lattice made of carbon atoms.

The team managed to construct the circuit on a silicon carbide wafer and the circuit has graphene field-effect transistors. Back in 2010, the same IBM researchers exhibited the first graphene-based transistor; it could operate at 100 GHz and they have now managed to integrate it into a whole circuit.

Information on the Circuit

IEEE Spectrum comments that the circuit is a broadband radio-frequency mixer, which is essential to radios. The circuit produces new radio signals by calculating the sum and difference between two input frequencies. The circuit managed to complete frequency mixing up to 10 GHz and still functioned properly up to 257 degrees Fahrenheit.

The team thinks that they can improve the efficiency on it. If they manage to do so, the chips would be a huge help to the telecommunications industry, providing consumers with stronger signals in areas where they usually lack coverage.

More than one team has been working on the graphene transistors and receivers; though they find it difficult to connect single-carbon-atom-sheets to the metals and alloys typically utilized on the chips. The circuit also makes use of aluminum, gold and palladium; all of which have bad chemistry with graphene. The sensitivity of the graphene doesn’t help, it can be quickly and irreparably damaged in the etching process. Yu-Ming Lin and several team members from IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center discuss this fact in a paper on the circuit.

An Innovative Approach

The researchers devised a new method to bypass those problems; instead, they grow graphene on the silicon face of the silicon-carbide wafer. Afterwards, they coat the graphene in a polymer, performed the etching and proceeded to remove the polymer by using acetone. The transistor gates reach a length of about 550 nanometers and the whole wafer is the same size as a grain of salt.

Despite the mentioned progress, there is still more research to be done before these graphene FET chips dominate the technology market. The researchers at IBM aren’t resting though, they already have some ideas on how to improve the next generation of designs. One of these ideas is for a metal that doesn’t degrade graphene’s electrical conductivity. More information on the research can be read about in Science.

The commercialization of the material could mean huge business leverages for IBM as they capitalize on their growing technology in the field. We’ll have to wait and see when practical research can be conducted on the materials.

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