48
nanotimes
10-02 :: February 2010
News in Brief
Electronics //
IBM Scientists Demonstrate World‘s Fastest Graphene Transistor
I
BM (NYSE: IBM) researchers demonstrated a radio- phene obtained from natural graphite, proving that
frequency graphene transistor with the highest high performance can be obtained from graphene of
cut-off frequency achieved so far for any graphene different origins.
device – 100 billion cycles/second (100 GigaHertz
(GHz)). Transistors were fabricated on epitaxial Y.-M. Lin, C. Dimitrakopoulos, K. A. Jenkins, D. B. Far-
graphene synthesized on the silicon face of a silicon mer, H.-Y. Chiu, A. Grill, and Ph. Avouris: 100-GHz Tran-
carbide wafer, achieving a cutoff frequency of 100 sistors from Wafer-Scale Epitaxial Graphene, In: Science,
GHz for a gate length of 240nm. Vol. 327(2010), No. 5966, February 05, 2010, Page 662,
DOI:10.1126/science.1184289:
„A key advantage of graphene lies in the very high

http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1184289
speeds in which electrons propagate, which is es-
sential for achieving high-speed, high-performance
next generation transistors,“ said Dr. T.C. Chen, vice
president, Science and Technology, IBM Research.
„The breakthrough we are announcing demonstrates
clearly that graphene can be utilized to produce high
performance devices and integrated circuits.“
Uniform and high-quality graphene wafers were
synthesized by thermal decomposition of a silicon
carbide (SiC) substrate. The graphene transistor itself
utilized a metal top-gate architecture and a novel
gate insulator stack involving a polymer and a high
dielectric constant oxide. The gate length was mo-
IBM in 2008 (image): With a top gate deisgn and a gate
dest, 240nm, leaving plenty of space for further opti-
length 150nm, the team had demonstrated graphene
mization of its performance by scaling down the gate
transistors with a cut-off frequency of 26 GigaHertz using
length. It is noteworthy that the frequency perfor-
graphene flakes extracted from natural graphite.
mance of the graphene device already exceeds the
cut-off frequency of state-of-the-art silicon transistors IBM in 2010: Now, IBM achieved a cutoff frequency of
of the same gate length (~40 GHz). Similar perfor-
100 GHz for a gate length of 240nm. © IBM
mance was obtained from devices based on gra-
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