Building the world’s smallest transistors with graphene

Reporting their peer-reviewed findings in the latest issue of the journal Science, Dr Kostya Novoselov and Nanotech Northern Europe 2008 speaker Professor Andre Geim at The University of Manchester show that graphene can be carved into tiny electronic circuits with individual transistors having a size not much larger than that of a molecule.

This news has been covered by the BBC, the New Scientist, and Soft Machines.

Novoselov and Geim have shown that it is possible to carve out nanometre-scale transistors from a single graphene crystal. Unlike all other known materials, graphene remains highly stable and conductive even when it is cut into devices one nanometre wide.

Graphene transistors start showing advantages and good performance at sizes below 10 nanometres - the miniaturization limit at which the Silicon technology is predicted to fail.

"Previously, researchers tried to use large molecules as individual transistors to create a new kind of electronic circuits. It is like a bit of chemistry added to computer engineering", says Novoselov. "Now one can think of designer molecules acting as transistors connected into designer computer architecture on the basis of the same material (graphene), and use the same fabrication approach that is currently used by semiconductor industry".

"It is too early to promise graphene supercomputers," adds Geim. "In our work, we relied on chance when making such small transistors. Unfortunately, no existing technology allows the cutting materials with true nanometre precision. But this is exactly the same challenge that all post-silicon electronics has to face. At least we now have a material that can meet such a challenge."

Source: The University of Manchester