Researchers have made a groundbreaking discovery that could potentially revolutionize the field of electronics. They have found a way to produce semiconductors using graphene, a material that has long held promise due to its potential to outperform silicon in terms of electron mobility. Previous attempts to create high-quality semiconductors from graphene have been unsuccessful, leading researchers to explore other two-dimensional materials. However, the latest breakthrough offers a game-changing solution.
Graphene has a significant advantage compared to silicon in terms of electron mobility. However, it lacks a vital characteristic of useful semiconductors: a “bandgap,” a gap between low-energy and high-energy bands through which electrons can pass. This is one of the reasons why silicon carbide (SiC) components are so popular in computer chips.
A group of researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Tianjin University claims to have developed a method to address this issue. They have created a layer of graphene on a silicon carbide wafer, resulting in a semiconductor with a bandgap of 0.6 eV and high electron mobility at room temperature. The research, supervised by Regents’ Professor of physics Walter de Heer, was published in the prestigious science journal Nature.
The researchers achieved this breakthrough by using a technique called “quasi-equilibrium annealing.” This method allowed them to produce high-quality semiconducting epigraphene (SEG), a type of graphene, on the silicon carbide substrate. The team sandwiched two silicon carbide chips together, causing carbon atoms to transfer from the carbon surface to the silicon surface. This created a buffer layer bonded to the silicon carbide, enabling the production of wafer-scale single-crystal SEG.
The implications of this discovery are immense. High electron mobility in graphene-based semiconductors can lead to higher-performance transistors that could potentially replace silicon in electronic devices, including processor chips. The researchers even envision monolithic devices where semiconducting graphene seamlessly connects to conventional semi-metallic graphene, reducing device resistances and enabling the utilization of electron wave properties, which would be a significant breakthrough in electronics.
In addition to electronics applications, graphene also shows promise in operating components that use terahertz frequencies. Few other materials can achieve this, making graphene a potential candidate for future communications technologies, such as 6G.
While the researchers are eager to scale up the production of SEG for commercial viability, they acknowledge that it may take time for graphene-based semiconductors to fully develop. However, this groundbreaking discovery represents a significant step forward in the quest for advanced, high-performance electronic materials. The potential for graphene-based semiconductors to usher in a new era of electronics is enormous, and further research and development in this field are eagerly awaited.
The source of the article is from the blog combopop.com.br