Graphene for radio frequency electronics ( 2012) Study

In the past several decades, we have witnessed dramatic advances
in electronics that have found widespread application in computing,
communications, automation, and other areas to affect just about
every aspect of our lives. To a large extent, these advances have been
made possible by the continued miniaturization or ‘down-scaling’
of electronic devices, particularly the silicon-based transistors,
leading to denser, faster, and more power-efficient circuitry. Today,
processors containing over two billion metal oxide semiconductor
field-effect transistors (MOSFETs), many with gate lengths of
just 30 nm, are in mass production1. By itself, miniaturization has
allowed for the continued performance improvements required for
successive generations of integrated circuits, however, substantial
challenges are expected as silicon electronics quickly advance
towards the extremes of the physical spectrum. There is a consensus
in the community that the continued increase in device speed and
computation power through the evolutionary miniaturization of
silicon devices will soon reach a fundamental technological limit.
To ensure the continued progress of electronic technology and
fulfill the future demands of society, transformative technologies
that employ alternative materials and/or fundamentally different
operating principles are necessary.
Carbon based materials, such as carbon nanotubes and graphene,
are emerging as an exciting class of new materials for future electronics
due to their superior electronic properties. Carbon nanotubes and
graphene share a lot of common features in terms of their fundamental
electronic properties2,3. Since the discovery of carbon nanotubes in
19914, intensive research worldwide has resulted in many exciting
discoveries and prototype demonstrations of various electronic devices
MATTOD_2012_2_Review_Duan 328 23-08-12 12:24:46
ISSN:1369 7021 © Elsevier Ltd 2012 Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license..