New Form of Graphene Could Lead To New Electronic Devices And Superconductivity

An international group of researchers have come together to develop a new form of Graphene that makes it possible for electrons to behave like photons. This has made room for a new kind of electronic devices that will work on graphene's ability to carry electronics without resistance at room temperature. This property is called Ballistic Transport. Called the nanoribbons of epitaxial graphene, which act like optical waveguides or quantum dots, the new form lets electrons flow smoothly along the edges of the material. It is common knowledge that resistance increases with length as electrons encounter more and more impurities while moving through the conductor. As compared to other conductors like copper, the new graphene form is 10 times more conductive.

For the last 10 years, researchers around the world are trying to use graphene instead of silicon to create electronic devices. With this research work it has come to light that these new coherent electronics devices shall be very different that the ones made in silicon. Though Graphene has some unique properties, it also brings limitations to the table because it can't easily give the electronic bandgap that such devices need to operate. Sharing his views, Walt de Heer, a Regent’s professor in the School of Physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology said that it's time the research work is directed towards using graphene's unique electron transport properties to design new electronic devices that support ultra-fast computing based on a new approach to switching, instead of trying to replace silicon with it.


Among the universities who participated in the research, there's Georgia Tech and Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the U.S., Leibniz Universität Hannover in Germany and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in France. The researchers think that the the new form of graphene has paved way for a completely new way of looking at electronics. De Heer says, "New kinds of switches for this material are now on the horizon." His speculations suggest that the graphene nanoribbons may produce a new type of electronic transport - just like what is seen in superconductors. It only goes to say that we are on the verge of seeing the possibility of graphene based electronics becoming a reality.

This research is being supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) at Georgia Tech; the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR); the Scientific User Facilities Division, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, U.S. Department of Energy, and the Partner University Fund from the Embassy of France. What do you think about the use of graphene in electronics? Share with us in comments below.

Source:New form of graphene allows electrons to behave like photons « Kurzweil