Wafer-Scale Graphene Integrated Circuit

It is alleged by the scientists of IBM research that they have reached a milestone in forming a building block for the subsequent wireless devices. In a paper disclosed in the journal Science, IBM researchist made public the maiden integrated circuit built from wafer-size graphene, and revealed a broadband frequency mixer functioning at frequencies up to 10 gigahertz (10 billion cycles per second).

Aimed at wireless communications, this analog integrated circuit based on graphene would make better recent wireless devices and beckons to the possibility for a new set of applications. Among the conventional frequencies of present, transceiver and cell phone signals could be advanced, possibly allowing phones to function where they can't today while, at much higher frequencies, military and medical personnel could see covert weapons or operate medical imaging without the similar radiation riskiness of X-rays.

Graphene is the narrowest electronic material which is composed of a single layer of carbon atoms packed in a honeycomb formation, possesses exceptional electrical, mechanical, optical and thermal characteristics that could make it not so much costly and use less power in mobile electronics like smart phones.

In spite of noteworthy scientific advancement in the comprehension of this unprecedented material and the demonstration of high-performance graphene-based devices, the difficulty of combining graphene transistors with other components on an individual chip had not been cognized up to now, majorly because of the deficient adherence of graphene with metals and oxides and the need of dependable fabrication schemes to generate formative circuits and devices.

This latest integrated circuit is composed of a graphene transistor and a set of two inductors compactly built-in on a silicon carbide (SiC) wafer, surpasses these design obstacles by advancing wafer-scale fabrication methods that keep up the standard of graphene and, at the same time, make allowance for its consolidation to other elements in an intricate circuitry.

In this presentation, thermal annealing of SiC wafers synthesized graphene to comprise stable graphene layers on the surface of SiC. Four layers of metal and two layers of oxide are needed by the fabrication of graphene circuits to make top-gated graphene transistor, interconnects and on-chip inductors.

The circuit functions as a broadband frequency mixer, which generates output signals with varied frequencies (aggregate and difference) of the input signals. Mixers are considered as basic elements of various electronic communication systems. This graphene integrated circuit has been presented as capable of frequency mixing up to 10 GHz and fantastic thermal stability up to 125°C.

The fabrication scheme demonstrated can also be used in other types of graphene materials, including chemical vapor deposited (CVD) graphene films synthesized on metal films, and are also suitable for optical lithography for minimized cost and throughput. In the past, the team has demonstrated stand-alone graphene transistors with a cut-off frequency as high as 100 GHz and 155 GHz for epitaxial and CVD graphene, for a gate length of 240 and 40 nm, respectively.

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