IBM on Thursday demonstrated its fastest graphene transistor, which can execute 155 billion cycles per second, which is about 50% faster than previous experimental transistors shown by the company's researchers.
The transistor has a cut-off frequency of 155GHz, making it faster and more capable than the 100GHz graphene transistor shown by IBM in February last year, said Yu-Ming Lin, an IBM researcher.
The research also shows that high-performance, graphene-based transistors can be produced at low cost using standard semiconductor manufacturing processes, Lin said. That could pave the way for commercial production of graphene chips, though Lin could not say when manufacturing of such chips would begin.
Sabre (Julian) 92.5% Stock 04 STI
Good choice putting $4,000 rims on your 1990 Honda Civic. That's like Betty White going out and getting her tits done.
With the first observation of thermoelectric effects at graphene contacts, University of Illinois researchers found that graphene transistors have a nanoscale cooling effect that reduces their temperature.
Modern computer chips heat significantly as a result of the electrons in the current colliding with the device material. Future computer chips made out of graphene – carbon sheets 1 atom thick – could be faster than silicon chips and operate at lower power. However, a thorough understanding of heat generation and distribution in graphene devices has eluded researchers because of the tiny dimensions involved.
Sabre (Julian) 92.5% Stock 04 STI
Good choice putting $4,000 rims on your 1990 Honda Civic. That's like Betty White going out and getting her tits done.
ScienceDaily (Apr. 18, 2011) — University of Maryland researchers have discovered a way to control magnetic properties of graphene that could lead to powerful new applications in magnetic storage and magnetic random access memory.
The finding by a team of Maryland researchers, led by Physics Professor Michael S. Fuhrer of the UMD Center for Nanophysics and Advanced Materials is the latest of many amazing properties discovered for graphene.
A honeycomb sheet of carbon atoms just one atom thick, graphene is the basic constituent of graphite. Some 200 times stronger than steel, it conducts electricity at room temperature better than any other known material (a 2008 discovery by Fuhrer, et. al). Graphene is widely seen as having great, perhaps even revolutionary, potential for nanotechnology applications. The 2010 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to scientists Konstantin Novoselov and Andre Geim for their 2004 discovery of how to make graphene.
In their new graphene discovery, Fuhrer and his University of Maryland colleagues have found that missing atoms in graphene, called vacancies, act as tiny magnets -- they have a "magnetic moment." Moreover, these magnetic moments interact strongly with the electrons in graphene which carry electrical currents, giving rise to a significant extra electrical resistance at low temperature, known as the Kondo effect. The results appear in the paper "Tunable Kondo effect in graphene with defects" published this month in Nature Physics.
The Kondo effect is typically associated with adding tiny amounts of magnetic metal atoms, such as iron or nickel, to a non-magnetic metal, such as gold or copper. Finding the Kondo effect in graphene with vacancies was surprising for two reasons, according to Fuhrer.
"First, we were studying a system of nothing but carbon, without adding any traditionally magnetic impurities. Second, graphene has a very small electron density, which would be expected to make the Kondo effect appear only at extremely low temperatures," he said.
Sabre (Julian) 92.5% Stock 04 STI
Good choice putting $4,000 rims on your 1990 Honda Civic. That's like Betty White going out and getting her tits done.
In its research project, which was done at IBM Research in Yorktown Heights, New York, and funded by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Big Blue baked field-effect transistors and inductors based on graphene in the heart of an analog broadband radio frequency mixer. The mixer is used in radios and other communications gear to take a signal and step it up or down to another frequency. According to the abstract of the paper, between 25 and 125 degrees the broadband radio frequency mixer runs at up to 10GHz and had very little reduction in performance (under 1 decibel) running in that thermal range.
According to a a copy of the paper posted on EE Times, the graphene mixer was able to achieve a 27 decibel conversion loss operating at 4GHz, which is not bad compared to commercial-grade gallium arsenide mixers, which have a conversion loss of 7 decibels but peak at 1.95GHz. The graphene circuit did not need passive external components, so would presumably be cheaper to put into radios and other wireless devices, and could also potentially open up higher frequency bands for use.
What a graphene transistor cannot do – and therefore making it unusable for digital circuits of the kind at the heart of computing devices as they are currently architected – is switch completely off. The challenge, then, would seem to be making an analog computer out of graphene circuits. One that might fit nicely into the skull of a T-800 Terminator, for instance.
This research seems to be moving at light speed. What amazes me most is the temps and speeds.
Sabre (Julian) 92.5% Stock 04 STI
Good choice putting $4,000 rims on your 1990 Honda Civic. That's like Betty White going out and getting her tits done.
Scientists at the University of Manchester have come one step closer to creating the next generation of computer chips using wonder material graphene.
The world’s thinnest, strongest and most conductive material, discovered in 2004 at the University of Manchester by Professor Andre Geim and Professor Kostya Novoselov, has the potential to revolutionize material science.
Demonstrating the remarkable properties of graphene won the two scientists the Nobel Prize for Physics last year and Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne has just announced plans for a £50m graphene research hub to be set up.
Now, writing in the journal Nature Physics, the University of Manchester team have for the first time demonstrated how graphene inside electronic circuits will probably look like in the future.
By sandwiching two sheets of graphene with another two-dimensional material, boron nitride, the team created the graphene ‘Big Mac’ – a four-layered structure which could be the key to replacing the silicon chip in computers.
Because there are two layers of graphene completed surrounded by the boron nitride, this has allowed the researchers for the first time to observe how graphene behaves when unaffected by the environment.
Dr Leonid Ponomarenko, the leading author on the paper, said: “Creating the multilayer structure has allowed us to isolate graphene from negative influence of the environment and control graphene’s electronic properties in a way it was impossible before.
“So far people have never seen graphene as an insulator unless it has been purposefully damaged, but here high-quality graphene becomes an insulator for the first time.”
The two layers of boron nitrate are used not only to separate two graphene layers but also to see how graphene reacts when it is completely encapsulated by another material.
Professor Geim said: “We are constantly looking at new ways of demonstrating and improving the remarkable properties of graphene.”
“Leaving the new physics we report aside, technologically important is our demonstration that graphene encapsulated within boron nitride offers the best and most advanced platform for future graphene electronics. It solves several nasty issues about graphene’s stability and quality that were hanging for long time as dark clouds over the future road for graphene electronics.
"We did this on a small scale but the experience shows that everything with graphene can be scaled up.”
“It could be only a matter of several months before we have encapsulated graphene transistors with characteristics better than previously demonstrated.”
Graphene is a novel two-dimensional material which can be seen as a monolayer of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice.
Its remarkable properties could lead to bendy, touch screen phones and computers, lighter aircraft, wallpaper-thin HD TV sets and superfast internet connections, to name but a few.
Amazing how fast this technology is moving.
Sabre (Julian) 92.5% Stock 04 STI
Good choice putting $4,000 rims on your 1990 Honda Civic. That's like Betty White going out and getting her tits done.
Sabre (Julian) 92.5% Stock 04 STI
Good choice putting $4,000 rims on your 1990 Honda Civic. That's like Betty White going out and getting her tits done.
Computer World article
