news digest ♦ Novel Devices
“This constant resistance is related to one of the fundamental constants of physics, the conductance quantum,” de Heer notes. “The resistance of this channel does not depend on temperature, and it does not depend on the amount of current you are putting through it.”
What does disrupt the flow of electrons, however, is measuring the resistance with an electrical probe. The measurements showed that touching the nanoribbons with a single probe doubles the resistance; touching it with two probes triples the resistance.
Conceptual drawing of an electronic circuit comprised of interconnected graphene nanoribbons (black atoms) that are epitaxially grown on steps etched in silicon carbide (yellow atoms). Electrons (blue) travel ballistically along the ribbon and then from one ribbon to the next via the metal contacts. Electron flow is modulated by electrostatic gates. (Image courtesy of John Hankinson)
“This work shows that we can control graphene electrons in very different ways because the properties are really exceptional,” says Walt de Heer, a Regent’s professor in the School of Physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “This could result in a new class of coherent electronic devices based on room temperature ballistic transport in graphene. Such devices would be very different from what we make today in silicon.”
The research, which was supported by the National Science Foundation, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the W.M. Keck Foundation, was reported February 5th in the journal Nature.
The research was done through a collaboration of scientists from Georgia Tech in the United States, Leibniz Universität Hannover in Germany, the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in France and Oak Ridge National Laboratory - supported by the Department of Energy - in the United States.
For nearly a decade, researchers have been trying to use the unique properties of graphene to create electronic devices that operate much like existing silicon semiconductor chips. But those efforts have met with limited success because graphene - a lattice of carbon atoms that can be made as little as one layer thick - cannot be easily given the electronic bandgap that such devices need to operate.
De Heer argues that researchers should stop trying to use graphene like silicon, and instead use its unique electron transport properties to design new types of electronic devices that could allow ultra-fast computing - based on a new approach to switching. Electrons in the graphene nanoribbons can move tens or hundreds of microns without scattering.
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www.compoundsemiconductor.net March 2014
“The electrons hit the probe and scatter,” explains de Heer. “It’s a lot like a stream in which water is flowing nicely until you put rocks in the way. We have done systematic studies to show that when you touch the nanoribbons with a probe, you introduce a method for the electrons to scatter, and that changes the resistance.”
The nanoribbons are grown epitaxially on SiC wafers into which patterns have been etched using standard microelectronics fabrication techniques. When the wafers are heated to approximately 1,0000C, silicon is preferentially driven off along the edges, forming graphene nanoribbons whose structure is determined by the pattern of the three-dimensional surface. Once grown, the nanoribbons require no further processing.
The advantage of fabricating graphene nanoribbons this way is that it produces edges that are perfectly smooth, annealed by the fabrication process. The smooth edges allow electrons to flow through the nanoribbons without disruption. If traditional etching techniques are used to cut nanoribbons from graphene sheets, the resulting edges are too rough to allow ballistic transport.
“It seems that the current is primarily flowing on the edges,” de Heer says. “There are other electrons in the bulk portion of the nanoribbons, but they do not interact with the electrons flowing at the edges.”
The electrons on the edge flow more like photons in optical fibre, helping them avoid scattering. “These electrons are really behaving more like light,” he said. “It is like light going through an optical fibre. Because of the way the fibre is made, the light transmits without scattering.”
The researchers measured ballistic conductance in the graphene nanoribbons for up to 16 microns. Electron mobility measurements surpassing one million correspond to a sheet resistance of one ohm per square that is two orders of magnitude lower than what is observed in two-dimensional graphene - and ten times smaller than the best theoretical predictions for graphene.
“This should enable a new way of doing electronics,” de
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