DailyTech - Researchers Unlock Secret of Graphene Growth

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Hardware Researchers Unlock Secret of Graphene Growth
Jason Mick (Blog) - October 12, 2009 9:00 AM

7 comment(s) - last by AnnihilatorX.. on Oct 13 at 8:52 AM

New research shows how to control the growth of graphene deposits on an indium substrate. The graphene deposits concentricaly, forming tiny domes, the size of which researchers could control. The research could help to enable mass-produced graphene circuits. (Source: Alan Stonebraker)

Discovery could be employed to produce graphene circuits at high yields

Graphene is one of the most promising materials for upcoming generations of tiny computer circuits. A sheet of carbon a mere atom thick, the material provides good conduction, flexibility, and other desirable material parameters. Its use could enable faster, smaller, and lower power circuits. One problem, though, has been that growing graphene growth can be slow or inconsistent -- in other words, the material is ready for the electronics spotlight, but its production techniques aren't.

A significant technical discovery could help to change that. A team of top researchers --Paolo Lacovig, Monica Pozzo, Dario Alfè, Paolo Vilmercati, Alessandro Baraldi, and Silvano Lizzit at institutions in Italy, the UK and USA -- have gained some intriguing insight into how graphene layers grow on semiconductors.

The team used a sheet of indium, a semiconductor often used in the solar industry, and grew a graphene layer on top of it. Previously it was unknown exactly how the graphene layer formed, but the new research provides some good insight.

The carbon is deposited in concentric rings of atoms. The atoms on the perimeter attach strongly to the semiconductor, but the atoms on the interior do not. This causes the circle shaped deposit to bubble up in the shape of a tiny geodesic dome.

More importantly, the researchers varied various parameters to control the deposition process, created domes that were anywhere from a few nanometers to a few hundred nanometers. This control is a particularly exciting aspect of the work as it shows that its promise to the commercial electronics industry.

The work will be published in the October 12 in the journal Physical Review Letters.

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Redundancy

By Randomblame on 10/12/2009 12:21:21 PM , Rating: 4

"growing graphene growth"
"the researchers varied various parameters"

RE: Redundancy

By Phoenix7 on 10/13/09, Rating: 0

RE: Redundancy

By AnnihilatorX on 10/13/2009 8:49:36 AM , Rating: 2

I love the English language.
Phrases like that actually makes sense!

Parent

Solar power

By Fracture on 10/12/2009 10:04:06 AM , Rating: 4

quote:
The team used a sheet of indium, a semiconductor often used in the solar industry, and grew a graphene layer on top of it.

I think this is the most ironic part, since there was an experiment just recently looking to find a cheap replacement for the rare element indium for its use in solar panels and other photovoltaic devices. Indium is uniquely characterized by its transparency in thin amounts and the proposed replacement was using sheets of graphene only a few nanometers thick. Though the conductivity isn't as good as the metal itself, it is far, far cheaper. Now they'll be fighting to see who can use all the indium for this process =)

SeGe anyone?

By yougotkicked on 10/12/2009 6:32:33 PM , Rating: 2

as interesting as all nano-scale technological developments are, i thought silicon-geranium was the front runner for the next semiconductor material. it's not very difficult to manufacture (a lot of the same machines used for silicon may be converted) and IBM made a 1000Ghz processor using it on a 2 mm process.