A Huge Step Toward Mass Production of Graphene
This graphic represents an atom-thin sheet of graphene, a form of carbon that could replace silicon in future electronic devices. Scientists have developed a simple manufacturing method that could allow its mass production. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Scientists have leaped over a major hurdle in efforts to begin commercial production of a form of carbon that could rival silicon in its potential for revolutionizing electronics devices ranging from supercomputers to cell phones. Called graphene, the material consists of a layer of graphite 50,000 times thinner than a human hair with unique electronic properties. Their study appears in ACS’ Nano Letters, a monthly journal.
Victor Aristov and colleagues indicate that graphene has the potential to replace silicon in high-speed computer processors and other devices. Standing in the way, however, are today’s cumbersome, expensive production methods, which result in poor-quality graphene and are not practical for industrial scale applications.
Aristov and colleagues report that they have developed “a very simple procedure for making graphene on the cheap.” They describe growing high-quality graphene on the surface of commercially available silicon carbide wafers to produce material with excellent electronic properties. It “represents a huge step toward technological application of this material as the synthesis is compatible with industrial mass production,” their report notes.
Download full text article here: http://pubs.acs.org/stoken/presspac/presspac/full/10.1021/nl904115h
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Researchers Find Better Way to Manufacture Fast Computer Chips
By Pam Frost Gorder
“Graphene has huge potential -- it’s been dubbed ‘the new silicon,’” said Padture, who is also director of Ohio State’s Center for Emergent Materials.
Engineers at Ohio State University are developing a technique for mass producing computer chips made from the same material found in pencils.
Experts believe that graphene — the sheet-like form of carbon found in graphite pencils — holds the key to smaller, faster electronics. It might also deliver quantum mechanical effects that could enable new kinds of electronics.
Until now, most researchers could only create tiny graphene devices one at a time, and only on traditional silicon oxide substrates. They couldn’t control where they placed the devices on the substrate, and had to connect them to other electronics one at a time for testing.
In a paper published in the March 26 issue of the journal Advanced Materials, Nitin Padture and his colleagues describe a technique for stamping many graphene sheets onto a substrate at once, in precise locations. (more…)
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MIT: New Material Could Lead to Faster Chips
EECS assistant professors Tomás Palacios, left, and Jing Kong examine oscilloscope traces showing the doubling in frequency of an electromagnetic signal processed through their experimental graphene microchip. (Photo Donna Coveney/ Courtesy of MIT)
New research findings at MIT could lead to microchips that operate at much higher speeds than is possible with today’s standard silicon chips, leading to cell phones and other communications systems that can transmit data much faster.
The key to the superfast chips is the use of a material called graphene, a form of pure carbon that was first identified in 2004. Researchers at other institutions have already used the one-atom-thick layer of carbon atoms to make prototype transistors and other simple devices, but the latest MIT results could open up a range of new applications.
The MIT researchers built an experimental graphene chip known as a frequency multiplier, meaning it is capable of taking an incoming electrical signal of a certain frequency — for example, the clock speed that determines how fast a computer chip can carry out its computations — and producing an output signal that is a multiple of that frequency. In this case, the MIT graphene chip can double the frequency of an electromagnetic signal. (more…)
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