World's Thinnest Transistor Possible - Rice University

A Laboratory in the Rice University discovered a way to convert common fiber into graphene quantum dots. These are expected to prove useful in electronics, optical and biomedical industries. The Rice Lab materials scientist Pulickel Ajayan in a joint venture with colleagues in China, India, Japan and the Texas Medical centre found a one-step chemical conversion process that served as a simple technique to make graphene quantum dots. The results were also published online in the American Chemical Society’s Nano Letters.

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Graphene Quantum Dots used to design world's thinnest transistor.

Ajayan, Benjamin N. and Mary Greenwood Anderson, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Material Science said, there have been several attempts to make such materials with specific electronic techniques and luminescent properties using chemical breakdown of graphene layers. We thought that as these nano domains of graphitized carbons already exist in carbon fibers, why not use them?, they added.

Quantum dots are basically semiconductors that have a size and shape dependent band gap. These are of great use in the field of LEDs, solar cells and various medical imaging devices. The sub-5 nanometer carbon-based quantum dots discovered by Rice are highly soluble and its size and shape can be explicitly controlled by varying the temperature. The main advantage of graphene dots over fluorophores is the stability of their fluorescence.  Quantum dots do not lose their fluorescence easily. They last longer and avoid the photo bleach effect for which they are said to have a greater impact in imaging and sensing applications as well.

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