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Nanoelectronics

Nanoribbons on the edge

Nature Nanotechnology volume 5, pages 698–699 (2010)Cite this article

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Arrays of graphene nanoribbons are fabricated on structured silicon carbide substrates using self-organized growth, without lithography and with well-controlled widths.

Graphene is attractive for electronics because of its exceptional properties and the relative ease with which it can be integrated into transistors and circuits. In the form of large-area planar sheets, it can be processed using straightforward adaptations of methods that are already in widespread use by the semiconductor industry. However, graphene in its native single-layer form has zero electronic bandgap, which prevents transistor devices made with it from being turned off completely. This makes graphene unusable in power-efficient digital circuits (though it can still be used in radio frequency electronics)1. Narrow graphene ribbons have better switching capabilities, but they are difficult to manufacture owing to the very small widths that are required. Writing in Nature Nanotechnology, Michael Sprinkle, Walter de Heer and colleagues at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Institut Néel in Grenoble report a clever growth technique that yields organized, aligned arrays of narrow ribbons of graphene on structured substrates of silicon carbide (SiC), with the potential to enable switching properties suitable for broad classes of electronic systems2.

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Figure 1: An array of transistors that use graphene nanoribbons grown directly into place on the faceted step edges of a SiC wafer.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. John A. Rogers is in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA. jrogers@illinois.edu,

    John A. Rogers

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  1. John A. Rogers
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Rogers, J. Nanoribbons on the edge. Nature Nanotech 5, 698–699 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2010.200

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