11-06/07 :: June/July 2011

nanotimes News in Brief

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Graphene // New Electronics Material Closer to Commercial Reality © Text: Emil Venere / Purdue University, USA

This scanning electron microscope picture shows individual crystal “grains” in an array of a material called graphene. Researchers have developed a method for creating the arrays, an advancement that opens up the possibility of a replacement for silicon in high-performance computers and electronics. © University of Houston

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esearchers have developed a method for creating single-crystal arrays of a material called graphene,

an advance that opens up the possibility of a replace- ment for silicon in high-performance computers and electronics. The new findings represent an advance toward perfecting a method for manufactu- ring large quantities of single crystals of the material, similar to the production of silicon wafers.

“Graphene isn‘t there yet, in terms of high quality mass production like silicon, but this is a very impor- tant step in that direction,” said Yong P. Chen, corre- sponding author for the new study and Miller Family Assistant Professor of Nanoscience and Physics at Purdue University, USA.

Other researchers have grown single crystals of graphene, but no others have demonstrated how to create ordered arrays, or patterns that could be used

to fabricate commercial electronic devices and inte- grated circuits. The hexagonal single crystals are initi- ated from graphite “seeds” and then grown on top of a copper foil inside a chamber containing methane gas using a process called chemical vapor depositi- on. The seeded growth method, critical to the new findings, was invented by Qingkai Yu, co-correspon- ding author and an assistant professor at Texas State University‘s Ingram School of Engineering, USA.

Qingkai Yu, Luis A. Jauregui, WeiWu, Robert Colby, Jifa Tian, Zhihua Su, Helin Cao, Zhihong Liu, Deepak Pandey, DongguangWei, Ting Fung Chung, Peng Peng, Nathan Gu- isinger, Eric A. Stach, Jiming Bao, Shin-Shem Pei and Yong P. Chen: Control and Characterization of Individual Grains and Grain Boundaries in Graphene Grown by Chemical Vapour Deposition, In: Nature, Vol. 10(2011), No. 6, June 2011, Pages 443-449, DOI:10.1038/nmat3010: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nmat3010