Graphene Transistors Clocked At 26GHz

KentuckyFC writes "A team at IBM has built the first high quality graphene transistors and clocked them running at 26 GHz . That doesn't quite knock silicon off its perch. The fastest silicon transistors are an order of magnitude faster than that but the record is held by indium phosphide transistors which have topped 1000 GHz. But it's not bad for a new kid on the block. It took silicon 40 years to get this far. By contrast, the first graphene transistor was built only last year. IBM says 'the work represents a significant step towards the realization of graphene-based electronics.' (Abstract)."

Comments

pretty sweet

[Goldsmith]

IBM and Columbia are working together on this. Their grant calls for them to push this up to 50 THz.

Oh, and what was done last year was a single electron transistor... normal transistors were available just about as soon as graphene was, in 2004.

Graphene is great for young scientists.. but....

[blind biker]

OK, if you are an undergrad deciding on your choice for thesis and postgrad studies, graphene is great. There is a lot of companies, including Nokia, that pour tons and tons of money into graphene research. It's the easiest grant money to get these days.

That said, there's a reason you don't see much GaAS integrated circuits, even though GaAs has been around for decades, and has much higher carrier mobility (and therefore top speeds) than silicon: it's hard to devise a good IC technology for GaAs. For graphene the problems are way, way bigger than that even. I have seen some attempts of my colleagues (I research in nanosci) at fabricating graphene transistors, and while they can make discrete components with a certain limited rate of success, integration is not even on the horizon. Maybe other people around the world use technologies that are more promising, but it will take a great effort to knock silicon off the top spot for the time being. In fact, I predict a brighter immediate future for Si/Ge and some III/V group compounds as the successors of pure Si, as the next big thing in IC tech.

Re:Practical limit

[compro01]

Actually, the propagation speed can be pretty close to c. The speed of an electron is pretty darn slow (on the order of inches per hour, IIRC), but the propagation speed of an electromagnetic wave (which is what actually does stuff. it's like a hose full of marbles. you push a marble in, and another one pops out the other end.) is about 0.96c in good copper.