IBM clocks graphene transistor at 155GHz

IBM has demonstrated a new super whizzy graphene transistor, clocking in at 155GHz, up from the 100GHz it benched last year.

The breakthrough was made possible because the transistor was set on a substrate of "diamond-like carbon", itself layered on a commercial silicon wafer.

The diamond-like layer is a non-polar dielectric material. This means it does not trap charges, and it deals with the problem of scattering, a phenomenon which can "seriously degrade the electronic properties of graphene…. This scattering, which drastically limits the speed of the electrons and holes, comes about due to interactions between graphene and the dielectric substrate material" (per PhysicsWorld).

According to PC World Yu-Ming Lin, an IBM researcher, said that the company’s research had also shown that these transistors could be made using "standard semiconductor manufacturing processes", raising the possibility of commercial production of graphene components.

IBM’s researcher Phaedon Avouris said there is still more to come from graphene: "The cut-off frequency we obtained is the highest so far for transistors made from CVD-graphene. However, it is not, by far, the limit of what can be achieved because the quality of the CVD-graphene we used was modest (it's carrier mobility was less than 1000 cm2/Vs)."

More here.