1.

INTRODUCTION
Graphene [1] is an allotrope of carbon, whose structure is one-atom-thick planar sheets of sp2-bonded carbon atoms that are densely packed in a honeycomb crystal lattice. The term graphene was coined as a combination of graphite and the suffix -ene by Hanns-Peter Boehm, who described single-layer carbon foils in 1962. Graphene is most easily visualized as an atomic-scale chicken wire made of carbon atoms and their bonds. The crystalline or "flake" form of graphite consists of many graphene sheets stacked together. The carbon-carbon bond length in graphene is about 0.142 nanometers. Graphene sheets stack to form graphite with an interplanar spacing of 0.335 nm, which means that a stack of three million sheets would be only one millimeter thick. Graphene is the basic structural element of some carbon allotropes including graphite, charcoal, carbon nanotubes and fullerenes. It can also be considered as an indefinitely large aromatic molecule, the limiting case of the family of flat polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.

Graphene is a flat monolayer of carbon atoms tightly packed into a twodimensional (2D) honeycomb lattice, and is a basic building block for graphitic materials of all other dimensionalities. It can be wrapped up into 0D fullerenes, rolled into 1D nanotube or stacked into 3D graphite.

1.1 Existing Graphene Devices In February 2010, researchers at IBM reported that they have been able to create graphene transistors with an on and off rate of 100 gigahertz, far exceeding the rates of previous attempts, and exceeding the speed of silicon transistors with an equal gate length. The 240 nm graphene transistors made at IBM were made using extant silicon-manufacturing equipment, meaning that

for the first time graphene transistors are a conceivable though still fanciful replacement for silicon.

In June 2011, IBM researchers announced that they had succeeded in creating the first graphene-based integrated circuit, a broadband radio mixer. The circuit handled frequencies up to 10 GHz, and its performance was unaffected by temperatures up to 127 degrees Celsius.

2. REVIEW TO EXISTING FABRICATION TECHNOLOGY 2.1 Semiconductor or Silicon fabrication

The semiconductors of the periodic table of the chemical elements were identified as the most likely materials for a solid-state vacuum tube. Starting with copper oxide, proceeding to germanium, then silicon, the materials were systematically studied in the 1940s and 1950s. Today, silicon [2] monocrystals are the main substrate used for ICs although some III-V compounds of the periodic table such as gallium arsenide are used for specialized applications like LEDs, lasers, solar cells and the highest-speed integrated circuits. It took decades to perfect methods of creating crystals without defects in the crystalline structure of the semiconducting material.

2.2 Steps in Fabrication

Semiconductor ICs are fabricated in a layer process which includes these key process steps: Imaging Deposition Etching The main process steps are supplemented by doping and cleaning. Mono-crystal silicon wafers (or for special applications, silicon on sapphire or gallium arsenide wafers) are used as the substrate. Photolithography is used to mark different areas of the substrate to be doped or to have polysilicon, insulators or metal (typically aluminium) tracks deposited on them.

Integrated circuits are composed of many overlapping layers, each defined by photolithography, and normally shown in different colors. Some layers mark where various dopants are diffused into the substrate (called diffusion layers), some define where additional ions are implanted (implant layers), some define 3

the conductors (polysilicon or metal layers), and some define the connections between the conducting layers (via or contact layers). All components are constructed from a specific combination of these layers. In a self-aligned CMOS process, a transistor is formed wherever the gate layer (polysilicon or metal) crosses a diffusion layer. Capacitive structures, in form very much like the parallel conducting plates of a traditional electrical capacitor, are formed according to the area of the "plates", with insulating material between the plates. Capacitors of a wide range of sizes are common on ICs. Meandering stripes of varying lengths are sometimes used to form on-chip resistors, though most logic circuits do not need any resistors. The ratio of the length of the resistive structure to its width, combined with its sheet resistivity, determines the resistance. The layers of material are fabricated much like a photographic process, although light waves in the visible spectrum cannot be used to "expose" a layer of material, as they would be too large for the features. Thus photons of higher frequencies (typically ultraviolet) are used to create the patterns for each layer. Because each feature is so small, electron microscopes are essential tools for a process engineer who might be debugging a fabrication process. Each device is tested before packaging using automated test equipment (ATE), in a process known as wafer testing, or wafer probing. The wafer is then cut into rectangular blocks, each of which is called a die. Each good die (plural dice, dies, or die) is then connected into a package using aluminium (or gold) bond wires which are welded and/or thermosonic bonded to pads, usually found around the edge of the die. After packaging, the devices go through final testing on the same or similar ATE used during wafer probing. Industrial CT scanning can also be used. Test cost can account for over 25% of the cost of fabrication on lower cost products, but can be negligible on low yielding, larger, and/or higher cost devices. 4

As of 2005, a fabrication facility (commonly known as a semiconductor fab) costs over $1 billion to construct, because much of the operation is automated.

2.3 Silicon Manufacturing

The use of silicon in semiconductor devices demands a much greater purity than afforded by metallurgical grade silicon [3]. Very pure silicon (>99.9%) can be extracted directly from solid silica or other silicon compounds by molten salt electrolysis. This method, known as early as 1854, has the potential to directly produce solar-grade silicon without any carbon dioxide emission at much lower energy consumption. Solar grade silicon cannot be used for semiconductors, where purity must be extreme to properly control the process. Bulk silicon wafers used at the beginning of the integrated circuit making process must first be refined to "nine nines" purity (99.9999999%), a process which requires repeated applications of refining technology.

2.3.1 Silicon Manufacturing Techniques

The majority of silicon crystals grown for device production are produced by the Czochralski process, (CZ-Si) since it is the cheapest method available and it is capable of producing large size crystals. However, single crystals grown by the Czochralski process contain impurities because the crucible containing the melt often dissolves. Historically, a number of methods have been used to produce ultra-high-purity silicon.

Fig 1 Monocrystalline silicon ingot grown by the Czochralski process

Early silicon purification techniques were based on the fact that if silicon is melted and re-solidified, the last parts of the mass to solidify contain most of the impurities. The earliest method of silicon purification, first described in 1919 and used on a limited basis to make radar components during World War II, involved crushing metallurgical grade silicon and then partially dissolving the silicon powder in an acid. When crushed, the silicon cracked so that the weaker impurity-rich regions were on the outside of the resulting grains of silicon. As a result, the impurity-rich silicon was the first to be dissolved when treated with acid, leaving behind a more pure product.

In zone melting, also called zone refining [3], the first silicon purification method to be widely used industrially, rods of metallurgical grade silicon are heated to melt at one end. Then, the heater is slowly moved down the length of the rod, keeping a small length of the rod molten as the silicon cools and re6

solidifies behind it. Since most impurities tend to remain in the molten region rather than re-solidify, when the process is complete, most of the impurities in the rod will have been moved into the end that was the last to be melted. This end is then cut off and discarded, and the process repeated if a still higher purity is desired.

At one time, DuPont produced ultra-pure silicon by reacting silicon tetrachloride with high-purity zinc vapors at 950 C, producing silicon by SiCl4 + 2 Zn Si + 2 ZnCl2. However, this technique was plagued with practical problems (such as the zinc chloride byproduct solidifying and clogging lines) and was eventually abandoned in favor of the Siemens process. In the Siemens process, high-purity silicon rods are exposed to trichlorosilane at 1150 C. The trichlorosilane gas decomposes and deposits additional silicon onto the rods, enlarging them because 2 HSiCl3 Si + 2 HCl + SiCl4. Silicon produced from this and similar processes are called polycrystalline silicon. Polycrystalline silicon typically has impurity levels of less than one part per billion.

Today, silicon is purified by converting it to a silicon compound that can be more easily purified by distillation than in its original state, and then converting that silicon compound back into pure silicon. Trichlorosilane is the silicon compound most commonly used as the intermediate, although silicon tetrachloride and silane are also used. When these gases are blown over silicon at high temperature, they decompose to high-purity silicon.

3. THE GRAPHENE TECHNOLOGY

A new form of carbon being pioneered by Walter de Heer of Georgia Tech could lead to speedy, compact computer processors. The remarkable increases in computer speed over the last few decades could be approaching an end, in part because silicon is reaching its physical limits. But this past December, in a small Washington, DC, conference room packed to overflowing with an audience drawn largely from the semiconductor industry, Georgia Tech physic-s professor Walter de Heer described his latest work on a surprising alternative to silicon that could be far faster. The material: graphene, a seemingly unimpressive substance found in ordinary pencil lead.

Fig 2 carbon atoms arranged in a Hexagonal format

Theoretical models had previously predicted that graphene [1], a form of carbon consisting of layers one atom thick, could be made into transistors more than a hundred times as fast as today's silicon transistors. In his talk, de Heer reported making arrays of hundreds of graphene transistors on a single chip. Though the 8

transistors still fall far short of the material's ultimate promise, the arrays, which were fabricated in collaboration with MIT's Lincoln Laboratory, offer strong evidence that graphene could be practical for future generations of electronics.

3.1 Graphene Fabrication

3.1.1 Drawing method In 2004, the Manchester group obtained graphene by micro-mechanical alleviation of graphite. They used adhesive tape to repeatedly split graphite crystals into increasingly thinner pieces. The tape with attached optically transparent flakes was dissolved in acetone, and, after a few further steps, the flakes including monolayers were sedimented on a silicon wafer. Individual atomic planes were then hunted in an optical microscope. A year later, the researchers simplified the technique and started using dry deposition, avoiding the stage when graphene floated in a liquid. Relatively large crystallites (first, only a few micrometres in size but, eventually, larger than 1 mm and visible by the naked eye) were obtained by the technique. It is often referred to as a scotch tape or drawing method. The latter name appeared because the dry deposition resembles drawing with a piece of graphite. The key for the success probably was the use of high-throughput visual recognition of graphene on a properly chosen substrate, which provides a small but noticeable optical contrast. The optical properties section below contains a photograph of what graphene looks like.

The isolation of graphene led to the current research boom. Previously, freestanding atomic planes were often "presumed not to exist" because they are thermodynamically unstable on a nanometer scale and, if unsupported, have a tendency to scroll and buckle. It is currently believed that intrinsic microscopic roughening on the scale of 1 nm could be important for the stability of purely 2D crystals.

There were a number of previous attempts to make atomically thin graphitic films by using exfoliation techniques similar to the drawing method. Multilayer samples down to 10 nm in thickness were obtained. These efforts were reviewed in 2007. Furthermore, a couple of very old papers were recently unearthed in which researchers tried to isolate graphene starting with intercalated compounds (see History and experimental discovery). These papers reported the observation of very thin graphitic fragments (possibly monolayers) by transmission electron microscopy. Neither of the earlier observations was sufficient to "spark the graphene gold rush", until the Science paper did so by reporting not only macroscopic samples of extracted atomic planes but, importantly, their unusual properties such as the bipolar-transistor effect, ballistic transport of charges, large quantum oscillations, etc. The discovery of such interesting qualities intrinsic to graphene gave an immediate boost to further research and several groups quickly repeated the initial result and moved further. These breakthroughs also helped to attract attention to other production techniques, such as epitaxial growth of ultra-thin graphitic films. In particular, it has later been found that graphene monolayers grown on SiC and Ir are weakly coupled to these substrates (how weakly remains debated) and the graphene substrate interaction can be passivated further. Not only graphene but also free-standing atomic planes of boron nitride, mica, dichalcogenides and complex oxides were obtained by using the drawing method.Unlike graphene, the other 2D materials have so far attracted surprisingly little attention.

3.1.2 Epitaxial growth on silicon carbide

Another method of obtaining graphene is to heat silicon carbide (SiC) to high temperatures (>1100 C) to reduce it to graphene. This process produces epitaxial graphene with dimensions dependent upon the size of the SiC substrate (wafer). The face of the SiC used for graphene formation, silicon- or carbon-

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terminated, highly influences the thickness, mobility and carrier density of the graphene.

Many important graphene properties have been identified in graphene produced by this method. For example, the electronic band-structure (so-called Dirac cone structure) has been first visualized in this material. Weak anti-localization is observed in this material and not in exfoliated graphene produced by the penciltrace method. Extremely large, temperature-independent mobilities have been observed in SiC-epitaxial graphene. They approach those in exfoliated graphene placed on silicon oxide but still much lower than mobilities in suspended graphene produced by the drawing method. It was recently shown that even without being transferred graphene on SiC exhibits the properties of massless Dirac fermions such as the anomalous quantum Hall effect.

The weak van der Waals force that provides the cohesion of multilayer graphene stacks does not always affect the electronic properties of the individual graphene layers in the stack. That is, while the electronic properties of certain multilayered epitaxial graphenes are identical to that of a single graphene layer, in other cases the properties are affected as they are for graphene layers in bulk graphite. This effect is theoretically well understood and is related to the symmetry of the interlayer interactions.

Epitaxial graphene on SiC can be patterned using standard microelectronics methods. The possibility of large integrated electronics on SiC-epitaxial graphene was first proposed in 2004,and a patent for graphene-based electronics was filed provisionally in 2003 and issued in 2006.Since then, important advances have been made. In 2008, researchers at MIT Lincoln Lab produced hundreds of transistors on a single chip and in 2009, very high frequency transistors were produced at the Hughes Research Laboratories on monolayer 11

graphene on SiC. Band gap of the epitaxial graphene can be tuned by irradiating with laser beams; modified graphene has a lot of advantages in device application. 3.1.3 Epitaxial growth on metal substrates This method uses the atomic structure of a metal substrate to seed the growth of the graphene (epitaxial growth). Graphene grown on ruthenium doesn't typically yield a sample with a uniform thickness of graphene layers, and bonding between the bottom graphene layer and the substrate may affect the properties of the carbon layers.On the other hand, graphene grown on iridium is very weakly bonded, uniform in thickness, and can be made highly ordered. Like on many other substrates, graphene on iridium is slightly rippled. Due to the longrange order of these ripples, generation of minigaps in the electronic bandstructure (Dirac cone) becomes visible.High-quality sheets of few-layer graphene exceeding 1 cm2 (0.2 sq in) in area have been synthesized via chemical vapor deposition on thin nickel films. These sheets have been successfully transferred to various substrates, demonstrating viability for numerous electronic applications. An improvement of this technique has employed copper foil; at very low pressure, the growth of graphene automatically stops after a single graphene layer forms, and arbitrarily large graphene films can be created.However, in atmospheric-pressure CVD growth, multilayer graphene may form on copper (similar to that grown on nickel films).Growth of graphene has been demonstrated at temperatures compatible with conventional CMOS processing, using a nickel-based alloy with gold as catalysts. 3.1.4 Graphite oxide reduction Graphite oxide reduction was probably historically the first method of graphene synthesis. P. Boehm reported monolayer flakes of reduced graphene oxide already in 1962.In this early work existence of monolayer reduced graphene oxide flakes was demonstrated. The contribution of Boehm was recently 12

acknowledged by Nobel prize winner for graphene research, Andre Geim: (Many Pioneers in Graphene Discovery). Graphite oxide exfoliation can be achieved by rapid heating and yields highly dispersed carbon powder with a few percent of graphene flakes. Reduction of graphite oxide monolayer films e.g. by hydrazine, annealing in argon/hydrogen was reported to yield graphene films. However, the quality of graphene produced by graphite oxide reduction is lower compared to e.g. scotch-tape graphene due to incomplete removal of various functional groups by existing reduction methods. Recently, reduction and exfoliation of graphite oxide by focused solar radiation was reported with less oxygen functionalities. Some spectroscopic analysis of reduced graphene oxide can be found in the literature. 3.1.5 Growth from metal-carbon melts The general idea in this process is to dissolve carbon atoms inside a transition metal melt at a certain temperature, and then allow the dissolved carbon to precipitate out at lower temperatures as single layer graphene (SLG). The metal is first melted in contact with a carbon source. This source could be the graphite crucible inside which the melting process is carried out or it could be the graphite powder or chunk sources which are simply placed in contact with the melt. Keeping the melt in contact with carbon source at a given temperature will give rise to dissolution and saturation of carbon atoms in the melt based on the binary phase diagram of metal-carbon. Upon lowering the temperature, solubility of the carbon in the molten metal will decrease and the excess amount of carbon will precipitate on top of the melt. The floating layer can be either skimmed or allowed to freeze for removal afterwards. Different morphology including thick graphite, few layer graphene (FLG) and SLG were observed on metal substrate. The Raman spectroscopy proved that SLG has been successfully grown on nickel substrate. The SLG Raman spectrum featured no D and D' band, indicating the pristine and high-quality nature of SLG. Among transition metals, nickel provides a better substrate for growing SLG. Since 13

nickel is not Raman active, the direct Raman spectroscopy of graphene layers on top of the nickel is achievable. The graphene-metal composite could be utilized in thermal interface materials for thermal management applications. 3.1.6 Pyrolysis of sodium Ethoxide A 2008 publication described a process for producing gram-quantities of graphene, by the reduction of ethanol by sodium metal, followed by pyrolysis of the ethoxide product, and washing with water to remove sodium salts. 3.1.7 From nanotubes Experimental methods for the production of graphene ribbons are reported consisting of cutting open nanotubes.In one such method multi-walled carbon nanotubes are cut open in solution by action of potassium permanganate and sulfuric acid. In another method graphene nanoribbons are produced by plasma etching of nanotubes partly embedded in a polymer film. 3.1.8 From sugar Among other substances (such as Plexiglas), sucrose has been turned into graphene via application to a copper or nickel substrate and being subjected to 800C under low pressure with exposure to argon and hydrogen gas. The process can be completed in ten minutes and is scalable for industrial production. It also allows the manufacturer to modulate the purity of the graphene for applications that require electrical switching. 3.1.9 Dry ice method Narayan Hosmane and co-workers at Northern Illinois University in the United States have discovered a simple method for producing high yields of graphene by burning magnesium metal in dry ice a common experiment, but one where the products have not been fully characterized until now. The team has shown that graphene was formed in few-layer nanosheets up to 10 atoms thick. The material was characterized by Raman spectroscopy, energy-dispersive Xray analysis, X-ray powder diffraction, and transmission electron microscopy.

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3.1.10 Laser Scribing method Maher F. El-Kady, Veronica Strong, Sergey Dubin and Richard B. Kaner from the University of California, Los Angeles, discovered a very efficient and low cost way to produce graphene. Applying a layer of graphite oxide film to a DVD disc and burning it in a DVD writer resulted in a thin graphene film with high electrical conductivity (1738 Siemens per meter) and specific surface area (1520 square meters per gram), besides being highly resistant and malleable.

3.2 Features of Graphene

Besides making computers faster, graphene electronics could be useful for communications and imaging technolo-gies that require ultrafast transistors. Indeed, graphene is likely to find its first use in high-frequency applications such as terahertz-wave imaging, which can be used to detect hidden weapons. And speed isn't graphene's only advantage. Silicon can't be carved into pieces smaller than about 10 nanometers without losing its attractive electronic properties. But the basic physics of graphene remain the same--and in some ways its electronic properties actually improve--in pieces smaller than a single nanometer. The following are the youngs modulus of graphene.

Fig 3 youngs modulus of graphene

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Interest in graphene was sparked by research into carbon nanotubes as potential successors to silicon. Carbon nanotubes, which are essentially sheets of graphene rolled up into cylinders, also have excellent electronic properties that could lead to ultrahigh--performance electronics. But nanotubes have to be carefully sorted and positioned in order to produce complex circuits, and good ways to do this haven't been developed. -Graphene is far easier to work with.

3.3 Limitations of Silicon

Today's silicon-based computer processors can perform only a certain number of operations per second without overheating. But electrons move through graphene with almost no resistance, generating little heat. What's more, graphene is itself a good thermal conductor, allowing heat to dissipate quickly. Because of these and other factors, graphene-based electronics could operate at much higher speeds. "There's an ultimate limit to the speed of silicon--you can only go so far, and you cannot increase its speed anymore," de Heer says. Right now silicon is stuck in the gigahertz range. But with graphene, de Heer says, "I believe we can do a terahertz--a factor of a thousand over a gigahertz. And if we can go beyond, it will be very interesting."

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4. THE ULTIMATE SWITCH WITH GRAPHENE From the outside, transistors seem so simple and straightforward. But inside, they're actually a mess. If you could watch them working at the level of atoms, you'd see the electronic equivalent of a game of bumper cars. Electrons moving through even the best transistor channel can't go in straight lines. Instead they're buffeted continually by a host of imperfections and vibrations, which together put a strict limit on speed and generate a lot of heat in the process.

Fig 4 Internal structure of Transistor

The good news is that it doesn't have to be that way. By a quirk of quantum mechanics[4], electrons moving through m-thick sheets of carbonknown as graphenedon't suffer much at all from these sorts of collisions. Instead, they behave like massless particles, speeding along in straight lines for long distances just like photons do. And just like light, these electrons can be made to bend or bounce back when they move from one medium to another.

with this light-mimicking behavior replace the logic circuitry at the heart of every computer processor. Everyone today agrees that the days of the evershrinking CMOS transistor are numbered; the only disagreement is about what that number is. After 50 years of steady miniaturization, chipmakers have just about shrunk the device to its limits. The future gets hazy beyond 2020, but we know that to continue making faster, cheaper, and more energy efficient chips, we'll need a new technology. In the United States, the hunt for novel computing devices that can start replacing CMOS transistors in the coming decade has crystallized into a massive effort called the Nanoelectronics Research Initiative, which includes 17

many of the world's biggest chipmakers, state and federal agencies, and dozens of universities. Light-like graphene logic is just one of half dozen or so possible successors to CMOS, but we think its combination of features makes it the heir apparent. For one thing, graphene logic will be extraordinarily fast. Instead of manipulating information by turning the flow of current on and off through a transistor channel, graphene logic could perform calculations by bending, reflecting, focusing, and defocusing electrons moving at 1/300th the speed of lightabout 10 times as fast as electrons in conventional silicon CMOS devices. Logic devices built from graphene will consume less power and take up far less real estate than CMOS or optical switches. And unlike any other technology being considered, graphene devices have the potential to simplify and speed up chips by creating truly reconfigurable logic. Such logic would be able to change its type on the fly: In response to electronic signals, an AND gate, for example, could be transformed into an OR gate and then back again. We have already shown that the fundamental physics of these graphene switches works just as theorists expected, and we are now on the verge of creating the very first reconfigurable devices. As you might imagine, no ordinary semiconductor can be used to shuttle electrons around like beams of light. In the silicon CMOS transistors that make up today's chips, electrons can barely move a few nanometers before they bounce off an impurity or are buffeted by acoustic waves generated by the crystal. Other semiconductor materials aren't much better.

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4.1 GATE TEST Laboratory experiments[5] have shown that graphene's resistance to the flow of current varies, depending on how it is angled when placed atop a pair of gates. The results suggest that the fraction of electrons that pass through the gate interface changes with the angle, just like light.

But graphene is different. First isolated in 2004, the material consists of a single sheet of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb-like lattice of hexagons. Roll it up and you've got a carbon nanotube. Stack it and you can make graphite. Material scientists still disagree about what they should call the stuff: Some say it's a "zero bandgap semiconductor," others simply refer to it as a semimetal. However you identify it, graphene is quite different from any other material we're used to working with.

Fig 5 Gate Test

Graphene's symmetrical, two-dimensional crystalline structure is responsible for most of its unique qualities. Electrons surrounding each carbon atom can take on only a limited set of energies; each electron occupies a level that corresponds to an allowed quantum state. Like all materials with a periodic arrangement of atoms, these allowed electrical states overlap in space and meld to form a new spectrum of allowed statesa band structure. In an ordinary semiconductor, 19

electrons that are stuck to atoms are confined to the valence band, and those that are free to move around the lattice occupy the conduction band. But in graphene, these two bands actually touch, and they take on a highly unusual property. If you calculate the energy of any free electron in graphene, you'll find that, just as with the photon, its graphene always move at the maximum velocity possible, regardless of how energetic they are energy is directly proportional to its momentum. (A photon doesn't have mass, but it has a momentum that arises from its wavelike, quantum-mechanical nature.) Because they are effectively massless, electrons in. As a result, once they've been set in motion, electrons in graphene require no energy to keep going. What's more, quantum mechanics prohibits one of the most basic outcomes of a collisionthat of recoil. An electron in graphene isn't allowed to completely reverse its direction of motion. This prohibition allows it to move virtually unimpeded through a graphene sheet and tunnel effortlessly through such barriers as p-n junctions. While an electron or hole moving in silicon typically gets deflected after moving a few atom lengths at most, in graphene these charge carriers can travel in straight lines across tens of thousands of atoms at 10 times the speed they can in silicon. At room temperature, graphene's electrical conductivity beats that of silver, the least resistive metal.

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Fig 6 Illustration: Bryan Christie Design

4.2 REFRACTIVE LOGIC One way to make a simple binary graphene device is to divide a square gate beneath a graphene sheet into two triangles. Electrons are reflected if the gates have opposite voltage and pass through the device if the voltages are the same. One of the first things you might think to do with this material is to use it to make fast transistors. And indeed, researchers have done just that. With the support of the United States' Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, colleagues of IBM have shown that graphene can be used to build speedy radio frequency switches on silicon wafers. Since the work began in 2008, graphene transistors have been built that can amplify signals over a wide range, up to frequencies of 280 gigahertz. Researchers expect to be able to create switches capable of handling 500-GHz signals by 2013. These transistors are great for radio frequency circuits such as RF amplifiers or mixers. But the technology isn't well suited for making logic devices. For one thing, graphene isn't really a semiconductor. Because graphene in its natural state has no bandgap, a vanishingly small amount of energy is needed to knock an electron free of its valence band. So graphene switches are always in some 21

conductive state. Current can be made to move back and forth, but it can't easily be turned on and off, meaning there's no easy way to represent bits. Engineers have some tricks that can be used to create an artificial bandgap. They can, for example, pattern graphene into very thin ribbons or apply an electric field across two layers of graphene stacked one on top of the other. But while these sorts of approaches do create a bandgap, they have the side effect of reducing electron speed. In nanoribbons, for example, electrons have a tendency to get scattered by the edges of the ribbon. And neither technique is far enough along to create speedy transistors with high enough on-off ratios and low enough leakage current to compete with present-day chips. If we toss out the idea of making transistors, we can take advantage of graphene's best properties and, if we're fortunate, end up with a new technology that can keep the world on a Moore's Law [6]like progression toward cheaper, lower power and better-performing processors.

Fig 7 Moores law

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Given the fact that we're contemplating treating electrons just like light, you might ask why we don't simply build logic from photonic systems. Optical devices like lasers have long been an attractive way to make speedy computing circuitry. Instead of transistors, the systems use a combination of amplifiers, modulators, emitters, detectors, and waveguides to manipulate photons and perform computations. But optoelectronic circuits themselves aren't a practical option for nextgeneration logic. The components can't get any smaller than the wavelength of light they're manipulating, which for optical circuits means feature sizes on the order of one micrometer, dozens of times the size of today's CMOS devices. The light sources needed also draw a lot of power, making them impractical for microprocessor chips. Graphene offers a good compromiseelectrons in a graphene switch will move much faster than they can in ordinary transistors, and at the same time, the devices themselves will take up much less space and consume far less energy than a photonic system.

Fig 8 Illustration: Bryan Christie Design

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4.3 MULTIPLE MODES A more complex gate scheme, containing three buried gates beneath a graphene sheet and three electrodes on top for input and output, can be used to support multiple logic functions. As with a CMOS transistor, the basic unit for manipulating electrons in reconfigurable graphene logic is a simple straight p-n junction. These can be created by making a four-layer stack. At the very bottom, embedded into the substrate, two patchesor gatesmade of conductive material are built. An insulating layer of oxide is placed on top, and then a rectangle of graphene is placed on top of that. Electrodes placed on top of the graphene, at either end of the rectangle, are used to supply a reference current to the device. By applying a positive voltage on one gate, you can pull electrons from the nearest electrode into the graphene, creating an n-doped material. Applying a negative voltage to the other gate will draw holes from the other electrode into the graphene, creating a p-doped material. The resulting p-n junction isn't like the kind you'll find in a normal diode or transistor; it won't rectify current by allowing it to go in only one direction. Charge carriers pass freely across the barrier. But the junction does have the unique property of being angle dependent. The chance that an electron will get transmitted or reflected at the junction depends on its angle of approach. In 2007, theorist Vadim Cheianov of Lancaster University, in the United Kingdom, and two colleagues suggested this angle-dependent behavior could have an important application in electronics. The group showed that if electrons are injected from a single point on one side of a perfectly straight graphene p-n junction, the particles spread out, refract when they hit the junction, and then refocus to a point on the other side. It may not sound too profound, but this sort of behavior isn't really seen in the natural worldyou can't focus light with a flat lens. But graphene bends a stream of electrons differently than the way most materials bend light: It has the 24

electronic equivalent of what's referred to in optics as a negative index of refraction. An electron traveling through an n-doped region of graphene effectively takes on negative energy when it moves into a p-doped region, and conservation of momentum demands that it be bent in this counterintuitive way. So far, the only way to manipulate electromagnetic radiation in this fashion is to use artificial materials, which are often constructed by manipulating metal wires. It turns out that graphene is a natural electronic analogue to these metamaterials. Beyond focusing and defocusing electrons, graphene's refractive properties can also cause the total internal reflection of electrons. The material can be set up to accomplish this trick by taking advantage of the same angle dependence in a graphene p-n junction. For example, if the gates beneath a sheet of graphene are properly spaced, electrons sent toward a junction at a shallow anglesay, 45 degrees or lesswon't be able to pass through the boundary; they will all be reflected. To let the electrons pass through the junction unimpeded, you simply reverse the voltage on one of the gates, creating a uniform n-n or a p-p device. Inspired by these remarkable capabilities, a number of Nanoelectronics Research Initiative researchers, including teams at our two institutionsIBM and the University at Albany, State University of New Yorkhave been investigating how this refractive behavior can be used to manipulate electron flow and make logic switches. At the start, most of our research was theoretical. We realized that to make proper logic, we had to come up with designs that could actually perform logic operations, and we had to get a better understanding of how competitive they might be against state-of-the-art CMOS. One of the first designs we explored was the simple binary switch. You could build such a switch with just a square of graphene. If you draw an imaginary diagonal across the square, you create two triangles of graphene. Under each of these triangles you place a triangular wedge of conducting materialsuch as 25

copper or heavily doped siliconthat can be either positively or negatively charged. These buried wedges act as gates, altering the electronic properties of the graphene above them. If both wedges have the same charge, the switch is on, and an electron coming from one side of the graphene square can move in a straight line from one side of the square to the other. But if opposite biases are applied, the two graphene regions will become oppositely doped, and nearly all the electrons will be reflected at the interface. Now the switch is off.

Fig 9 Illustration: Bryan Christie Design

4.4 FOCUSING EFFECT Electrons moving in graphene can be focused and defocused at the interface between gates with opposite voltages. This simple device can be arranged in series to create a range of logic functions, including NOT, OR, and AND. According to our simulations, these devices should pass 1000 to 100 000 times as much current when they're on as when they're off, on par with CMOS and about 1000 times as good as graphene transistors. Because electrons move faster through the graphene, our calculations also suggest that logic made in this way could be 57 percent faster than CMOS, when power and area are held constant. 26

Raw speed is one thing, but these sorts of devices could also do things that traditional transistors can't do. With three buried gates and three electrodes for input and output, we reckon graphene switches can be made to perform a range of fairly complex logic functions by creating multiplexer devices. A multiplexer is usually used in communications applications to combine multiple inputs to make a single output signal. But the device's ability to handle multiple data streams also makes it a powerful way to make programmable logic. In this case, the three buried gates and two electrodes on either side of the rectangular multiplexer device can all act as inputs. An electrode at the center of the device delivers the output. Electrons coming from electrodes on either end of the device may reach the electrode at the center, but only if the three gates beneath the device have the right voltages to allow the electrons through. This basic device can be reconfigured to support as many as eight different logic functionseverything from the simple inversion of a signal to more sophisticated constructions such as NOT (A and NOT B). By changing the voltage of the gates, the multiplexer can be made to switch between these functions in an instant. That's a big departure from the way today's chips work. In CMOS circuits, a ptype transistor can't be converted to an n-type transistor or vice versa. As a result, you need more transistors to perform some of the more sophisticated logic operations. It takes at least eight transistors, for example, to perform an XOR function, an operation that could easily be accomplished with a single graphene multiplexer. That means less area on the chip and less power consumed. Considered another way, reconfigurable graphene logic can perform nearly three times as many calculations per second as a CMOS circuit, given the same amount of area and power. That wouldn't be too impressive if reconfigurable graphene logic remained in the realm of theory. But research into these devices has already begun to make its way from simulation to the laboratory. 27

In our preliminary studies of simple p-n junctions fabricated in the lab, we've shown that oppositely doped regions of graphene can be used to bend the paths of electrons. Varying the angle of a p-n junction with respect to an incoming beam of electrons can significantly alter the resistance of the device. This is an early proof of principle that we can create devices that can divert electrons. We might also be able to create the electronic equivalent of an optical fiber. Early last year, a team at Harvard reported they had created a channel for electrons by applying different voltages to gates that were placed parallel to a graphene sheet. In their system, the electrons hit the sides of the graphene channel at glancing angles and experienced significant internal reflection. The work suggests we could use graphene not only to make switches but also to guide electrons from one logic device to the next. These steering devices would be built the same way that logic devices are in a graphene sheet; the only difference between them would be the way voltages are applied to gates beneath the graphene sheet.

Fig 10 Illustration: Bryan Christie Design

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4.5 TOTAL REFLECTION Electrons moving in graphene can be made to bounce back and forth in the electronic equivalent of an optical fiber, which can be built with fields generated by top and bottom gates. For now the biggest hurdle to bringing these new sorts of integrated circuits into production is the purity of the material. Electrons in today's graphene can move up to a micrometer before getting scattered by imperfections, such as corrugations in the surface of the material or grain boundaries between adjacent crystal patches. But electrons will likely need to be able to travel for 100 micrometers or even millimeters in graphene in order for it to be a viable logic material. Fortunately, graphene fabrication has only been getting better since the material was first isolated. One of the first techniques used to make graphene was to push graphite across the surface of a silicon wafer, a process that could produce only imperfect, microscopic flakes. Now we have more precise methods that can produce fairly pure graphene on a large scale. We can heat silicon carbide wafers, for example, to evaporate the silicon on the surface, leaving behind a layer of graphene. We can make even purer graphene sheets by growing the material using chemical vapor deposition and then using a layer of polymer to transfer the graphene to a wafer. This technique has met with great success. In December, a team at IBM used it to create the first graphene-based RF devices and amplifier circuits built on a 200-millimeter wafer, the biggest graphene layer with fully functional circuits that's been shown so far. We have very good reason to anticipate that graphene quality will only continue to improve. With luck, we might see graphene-based reconfigurable logic prototypes within the next five years. For building logic capable of replacing CMOS circuits, it won't be a moment too soon.

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5. TRANSISTORS BUILT FROM GRAPHENE 5.1 IBMS Graphene based Processor IBM has created a graphene-based processor that can execute 100 billion cycles per second (100GHz), almost four times the speed of previous experimental graphene chips. With this research, IBM has also shown that graphene-based transistors can be produced by the wafer, which could pave the way for commercial-scale production of graphene chips. If commercialized, such graphene processors could be the basis of superior signal processing componentry, improving the fidelity of audio and video recording, radar processing and medical imaging. IBM conducted the work on behalf of the U.S. Defense Department's DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), under a program to develop high-performance RF (radio frequency) transistors. This prototype processor was created on a 2-inch wafer, though in principle it could be done on even larger wafers, which should bring the production costs down. Graphene is produced by heating a silicon carbide wafer, allowing the silicon to evaporate. Until now, the downside of graphene has been that it is very sensitive to the environment. During the fabrication process, an oxide layer is deposited over the graphene to form the gate insulator. Typically, this deposition degrades the graphene's electron mobility, due to defects in the oxide that scatter electrons in the graphene. The IBM researchers minimized the damage by separating the graphene from the oxide with a very thin polymer layer. This new approach has been instrumental in allowing the researchers to almost quadruple the frequency of graphene chips. Last year, research teams from IBM and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology both demonstrated graphene processors capable of frequencies around 26GHz. By comparison, silicon-based 30

transistors of the same gate length (240 nanometers) have only been able to scale up to a clock rate of 40Ghz or so. It also sets the stage for commercial production. The research shows that "highquality graphene can be produced on a wafer scale, and graphene transistors can be fabricated with those processes used in the semiconductor industries. Lin cautioned against thinking of graphene as a substitute for the silicon-based microprocessors used in today's computers, at least at any time in the near future. 5.2 IBMS RF Graphene Transistor Scientists at IBM have demonstrated a radio-frequency graphene transistor running at 100 GHzthats 100 billion cycles per secondthe highest frequency achieved so far for a graphene device. Although the technology is a long way from making it into computers, game consoles, or cell phones, it does start to pave the way for ever-faster chips and communications gear using carbon-based electronicsand IBMs demo was built at a comparatively mammoth 240nm scale, leaving the company plenty of room to shrink down the technology using existing fabrication technology uses for silicon wafers current tech can crunch down gate sizes to under 35 nm. 5.3 Intels Processor Intel announced to have started to produce processors at 22nm. If this transition has passed without any notable problem, one continues to wonder how they will manage to continue to make increasingly smaller sized devices in a near future. One should manage to make chips under 20nm, but then, to gain every nanometer will be an increasingly difficult challenge. One of the routes under consideration before going to a quantum computer, would be to use carbon, in its two-dimensional form, graphene. Researchers of the American university of Arizona announced to have made a break-through in this field. They succeeded in producing a transistor containing graphene which was able to reach the frequency of 300 GHz. Even though others such as IBM had already succeeded 31

in producing similar transistors reaching 100 Ghz, their prowess is especially in the way in which the transistor was produced. They used nano-needles that were used as guides with the manufacture of this transistor.

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6. ADVANTAGES Graphene is better suited for making analog transistors, such as signal processors and amplifiers. Today, such circuitry is largely made from GaAs (gallium arsenide), though GaAs offers nowhere near the same electron mobility

6.1 APPLICATIONS Graphene has such a great number of exceptional properties, and thus shows a great potential of applications in electronic engineering, optical devices, etc. Ultra-high frequency transistor high conductivity, great transmission velocity in a nanometer scale! Ultra-fast photodetector high conductivity, large surface area and transparency! Substitute for ITO graphene is transparent, conductive, flexible, chemical inert, and cheap!

Fig 11 applications of graphene

New devices like Touch screens, Micro Displays and Monitors Chip Making, Circuit Designs 33

 Solar cells Micro Fuel Cells Air Bag Deployment Systems and Gyroscopes in Car Electronic Stability Control Pressure Sensors, Micro Tips & probes.

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7. CONCLUSION
We might see graphene based reconfigurable logic prototypes within the next five years that can replace CMOS circuits. High speed devices and devices with very low power consumption will be manufactured. Graphene devices will be cheaper.

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REFERENCES
[1] Wikipedia(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphene) [2]Wikipedia(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon) [3] Siffert, Paul; Krimmel, E. F (2004). Silicon: Evolution and future of a technology. p. 33. ISBN 9783540405467. [4] IEEE journal magazine February 2012 [5] IEEE spectrum(http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/materials/graphenethe-ultimate-switch/0) [6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law

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SYNOPSIS GRAPHENE Graphene is an allotrope of carbon, whose structure is one-atom2 thick planar sheets of sp -bonded carbon atoms that are densely packed in a honeycomb crystal lattice. The term graphene was coined as a combination of graphite and the suffix -ene by Hanns-Peter Boehm, who described singlelayer carbon foils in 1962. Graphene is most easily visualized as an wire made of carbon atoms and their bonds. The crystalline or "flake" form of graphite consists of many graphene sheets stacked together. The carbon-carbon bond length in graphene is about 0.142 nanometers. Graphene sheets stack to form graphite with an interplanar spacing of 0.335 nm, which means that a stack of three million sheets would be only one millimeter thick. Graphene is the basic structural element of some carbon allotropes including graphite, charcoal, carbon nanotubes and fullerenes. It can also be considered as an indefinitely large aromatic molecule, the limiting case of the family of flat polycyclic. From the outside, transistors seem so simple and straightforward. But inside, they're actually a mess. If you could watch them working at the level of atoms, you'd see the electronic equivalent of a game of bumper cars. Electrons moving through even the best transistor channel can't go in straight lines. Instead they're buffeted continually by a host of imperfections and vibrations, which together put a strict limit on speed and generate a lot of heat in the process.

The good news is that it doesn't have to be that way. By a quirk of quantum mechanics, electrons moving through atom-thick sheets of carbonknown as graphenedon't suffer much at all from these sorts of collisions. Instead, they behave like massless particles, speeding along in straight lines for long distances just like photons do. And just like light, these electrons can be made to bend or bounce back when they move from one medium to another. What can you do with this light-mimicking behavior? Well, here's what we'd like to do: Replace the logic circuitry at the heart of every computer processor. Everyone today agrees that the days of the ever-shrinking CMOS transistor are numbered; the only disagreement is about what that number is. After 50 years of steady miniaturization, chipmakers have just about shrunk the device to its limits. The future gets hazy beyond 2020, but we know that to continue making faster, cheaper, and more energy efficient chips, we'll need a new technology.

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In the United States, the hunt for novel computing devices that can start replacing CMOS transistors in the coming decade has crystallized into a massive effort called the Nano electronics Research Initiative, which includes many of the world's biggest chipmakers, state and federal agencies, and dozens of universities. Light-like graphene logic is just one of half dozen or so possible successors to CMOS, but we think its combination of features makes it the heir apparent. For one thing, graphene logic will be extraordinarily fast. Instead of manipulating information by turning the flow of current on and off through a transistor channel, graphene logic could perform calculations by bending, reflecting, focusing, and defocusing electrons moving at 1/300th the speed of lightabout 10 times as fast as electrons in conventional silicon CMOS devices. Logic devices built from graphene will consume less power and take up far less real estate than CMOS or optical switches. And unlike any other technology being considered, graphene devices have the potential to simplify and speed up chips by creating truly reconfigurable logic. Such logic would be able to change its type on the fly: In response to electronic signals, an AND gate, for example, could be transformed into an OR gate and then back again. We have already shown that the fundamental physics of these graphene switches works just as theorists expected, and we are now on the verge of creating the very first reconfigurable devices. As you might imagine, no ordinary semiconductor can be used to shuttle electrons around like beams of light. In the silicon CMOS transistors that make up today's chips, electrons can barely move a few nanometers before they bounce off an impurity or are buffeted by acoustic waves generated by the crystal. Other semiconductor materials aren't much better. But graphene is different. First isolated in 2004, the material consists of a single sheet of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb-like lattice of hexagons. Roll it up and you've got a carbon nanotube. Stack it and you can make graphite. Material scientists still disagree about what they should call the stuff: Some say it's a "zero bandgap semiconductor," others simply refer to it as a semimetal. However you identify it, graphene is quite different from any other material we're used to working with. Graphene's symmetrical, two-dimensional crystalline structure is responsible for most of its unique qualities. Electrons surrounding each carbon atom can take on only a limited set of energies; each electron occupies a level that corresponds to an allowed quantum state. Like all materials with a periodic arrangement of atoms, these allowed electrical states overlap in space and meld to form a new spectrum of allowed statesa band structure. In an ordinary semiconductor, electrons that are stuck to atoms are confined to the valence band, and those that are free to move around the lattice occupy the conduction band. But in 38

graphene, these two bands actually touch, and they take on a highly unusual property. If you calculate the energy of any free electron in graphene, you'll find that, just as with the photon, its energy is directly proportional to its momentum. (A photon doesn't have mass, but it has a momentum that arises from its wavelike, quantum-mechanical nature.) Because they are effectively massless, electrons in graphene always move at the maximum velocity possible, regardless of how energetic they are. As a result, once they've been set in motion, electrons in graphene require no energy to keep going. What's more, quantum mechanics prohibits one of the most basic outcomes of a collisionthat of recoil. An electron in graphene isn't allowed to completely reverse its direction of motion. This prohibition allows it to move virtually unimpeded through a graphene sheet and tunnel effortlessly through such barriers as p-n junctions. While an electron or hole moving in silicon typically gets deflected after moving a few atom lengths at most, in graphene these charge carriers can travel in straight lines across tens of thousands of atoms at 10 times the speed they can in silicon. At room temperature, graphene's electrical conductivity beats that of silver, the least resistive metal.

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