An Overview on Graphene’s Latest Developments in Electronic Field

Graphene is an allotrope of carbon, whose structure is one-atom-thick planar sheets of sp2-bonded carbon atoms that are densely packed in a honeycomb crystal lattice, therefore it is considered as the future silicon. 

In 1970s, Scientists began making flakes of graphene, the atomic-scale lattice of carbon atoms. 

As an ultra-thin material, Graphene has a host of promising applications, from high-bandwidth communication to a new generation of low-cost smartphone and television displays.

One promising application for graphene is in making new parts of the radio-frequency spectrum available for consumer electronics applications, said Richard Doherty, president of Envisioneering Inc., an industry consulting firm.

“It allows you to tame a spectrum that before was the wild, wild West,” he said. For example, it might make possible a new class of Wi-Fi-style communications gear for wireless applications, or allow set-top cable boxes to be redesigned to send and receive ever-larger amounts of high-resolution video and data.

According to Newest study on Graphene material , IBM, the computer technology giant said on last Thursday that they have designed high-speed circuits from such material. Moreover, a report from the journal Science tells us that IBM’s G circuit is known as a broadband frequency mixer that was built on a wafer of silicon. Such circuits are widely used in all kinds of communications products by shifting signals from one one frequency to another.

Mr. Doherty added that display manufacturers were especially interested in graphene because the current wave of displays based on OLEDs, or organic light-emitting diodes, have limited lifespans.

In the past I.B.M. has created stand-alone graphene transistors, but not complete electronic circuits. However, this time the I.B.M. researchers describe a demonstration in which they deposited several layers of graphene on a silicon wafer, then created circuits based on graphene transistors and components known as inductors. They demonstrated frequency mixing up to speeds of 10 gigahertz.

Phaedon Avouris, IBM’s leader chemical physicist said while I.B.M. was now able to build circuits from the material, it was still learning reliable ways to make large quantities of graphene film. It is now possible to heat a silicon carbide wafer to about 1,300 degrees Celsius (nearly 2,400 Fahrenheit), causing the silicon atoms on the surface to evaporate and the remaining carbon atoms to rearrange themselves into the hexagonal graphene shape. 

Meantime, it is still a problem for IBM to get the graphene due to the high cost of the silicon carbide wafers according to Dr. Avouris’s comment.