UCLA fabricates ‘fastest graphene transistor to date’

The team from The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) told Nature Journal it has developed a new fabrication process for graphene transistors using a nanowire as the self aligned gate. UCLA's professor of chemistry and biochemistry, Xiangfeng Duan, said the new fabrication technique overcomes two limitations previously encountered in graphene transistors. "First, it doesn't produce any appreciable defects in the graphene during fabrication, so the high carrier mobility is retained," said Duan. "Second, by using a self aligned approach with a nanowire as the gate, the group was able to overcome alignment difficulties previously encountered and fabricate very short channel devices with unprecedented performance." According to Duan, these advances allowed the team to demonstrate the highest speed graphene transistors to date, with a cutoff frequency up to 300 GHz - comparable to the best transistors from high electron mobility materials such as gallium arsenide or indium phosphide. High speed rf electronics may also find wide applications in microwave communication, imaging and radar technologies.