IBM maintains tradition as it demonstrates graphene chip
Graphene has been tagged as the potential saviour of the electronics industry for some time. However, while it exhibits many interesting properties, several things have held back its use in chips.
Now, IBM has built a fully functional graphene rf receiver. The multistage device has three graphene transistors, four inductors, two capacitors and two resistors. The components occupy just 0.6mm2 and were made on a 200mm wafer. Apart from having good compatibility with silicon cmos processes, the new approach is said to enable 3d integration.
The device was used to transmit data at 4.3GHz and did so without distortion.
When it made a similar breakthrough with atomic scale manipulation in 1989, the company used 35 xenon atoms to create the letters 'I.B.M' on a substrate.
Maintaining the tradition, the message transmitted via the graphene device contained the letters I, B and M.
