Condensed Matter Seminar

Graphene Transistors

Professor Huili (Grace) Xing
Department of Electrical Engineering
University of Notre Dame

Thursday, November 5, 2009 - 4:00 P.M., NSH 184

 

Graphene is being considered as a possible candidate for transistor technology.  The major advantage often quoted is superior electron/hole mobilities compared to other semiconductors, but as the figure shows, this is not experimentally the case yet.  In addition, the lack of a bandgap limits the usage of 2D graphene for digital switching, where high on/off ratios are necessary.  However, several advantages may be listed: the perfect 2D confinement of carriers, electron/hole symmetry originating from a linear bandstructure, and the possibility of opening bandgaps lithographically by fabricating graphene nanoribbons (GNRs).  We summarize our results on the fabrication and characterization of 2D graphene FETs using exfoliated and epitaxial graphene, and present ideas of a new GNR-based tunneling FET architecture that promises to exploit the unique advantages of graphene.