Improve performance over silicon

(http://blog.gsmarena.com)

Researchers at the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology have refined a technology that allows them to create a new, faster transistor.

Graphene’s electron mobility is more than 200 times faster than silicon, and semiconductor devices with this technology are expected to have highly increased performance.

“Despite several years of research into graphene electronics, sufficient on/off current ratio in graphene transistors with conventional device structures has been impossible to obtain. We report on a three-terminal active device, a graphene variable-barrier “barristor” (GB), in which the key is an atomically sharp interface between graphene and hydrogenated silicon. Large modulation on the device current (on/off ratio of 105) is achieved by adjusting the gate voltage to control the graphene-silicon Schottky barrier. The absence of Fermi-level pinning at the interface allows the barrier’s height to be tuned to 0.2 electron volt by adjusting graphene’s work function, which results in large shifts of diode threshold voltages. Fabricating GBs on respective 150-mm wafers and combining complementary p- and n-type GBs, we demonstrate inverter and half-adder logic circuits.”

(http://www.sciencemag.org)

Obviously, this is huge news for Samsung, as semiconductors take up a sizable chunk of its operations. No word yet on if, when, and how Samsung will use this technology, though.