Research Activity
Carbon nanostructures, playing a central role in nanomaterial science and nanotechnology, are very attractive systems due to the wide diversity of their structural forms and peculiar properties. Graphene is a monolayer of carbon atoms in a dense honeycomb crystal structure. It can be considered a two-dimensional (2D) version of quasi one-dimensional (1D) carbon nanotubes and quasi zero-dimensional (0D) fullerenes.
There are a number of motivations for using graphene-based devices in future nanotechnologies. Among them, the use of graphene can improve the electronic devices intrinsic performance and power efficiency or enable new functionalities, such as ultra-high-sensitivity detection for chemical and biological applications.
So far most of the research efforts on graphene-based electronics have been directed towards digital applications. However, conventional or even tunnel-based graphene FETs suffer from the lack of a well-defined energy gap, ultimately leading to poor on/off current ratios unless extremely narrow (1-2 nm) graphene nanoribbons are used as channel material. In analog applications, where the FET is used as an amplifier, the on/off problem is much more relaxed and the huge potential of graphene can be fully exploited.
In particular, the most promising analog applications for graphene electronics can be identified in high-frequency low-noise amplifiers and/or power amplifiers, where the experimentally verified exceptional properties of respectively low-noise and high thermal conductivity, together with the high carrier drift-velocity and mobility, are best exploited.