Scientists from Georgia Institute of Technology “World’s first functional semiconductor made from graphene“. The epitaxial graphene they created is compatible with traditional microelectronics fabrication methods, making it a viable alternative to silicon.

Technologists continually point to the need to maintain the ability to use Moore’s Law in electronics manufacturing. But one of the key challenges facing those pushing the semiconductor industry forward is that silicon’s physical properties are approaching their limits. On the other hand, since its discovery in 2004, graphene has been constantly praised as a wonderful material designed to solve all problems related to semiconductor production in the future. But attempts to use it have not yet resulted in a significant or widespread technological breakthrough. However, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology seem to have actually taken an important step in this regard by combining purified epitaxial graphene with silicon carbide as a semiconductor.

The research is carried out by a group of scientists from the USA and China under the leadership of Professor of Physics Walter de Heer from the Georgia Institute of Technology. De Geer has been working on 2D graphene technologies since the early 2000s.

“We were motivated by the hope of applying three special properties of graphene in electronics. It is an extremely strong material that can withstand very high currents without heating up or breaking down.”– comment of the scientist.

But despite these three properties, an important semiconductor property has been missing in graphene-based materials until now. “A long-standing problem in graphene electronics is that graphene does not have the correct band gap and cannot switch on and off, that is, switch from one state to another at the correct rate.”– nanoparticles and nanosystems expert Dr. Lei Ma (Lei Ma) is de Heer’s colleague from the Tianjin University international center and also a co-author of the paper. “Ultra-high mobility semiconductor epitaxial graphene on silicon carbide”It was published in the journal Nature.

Researchers announced that they discovered a way to grow graphene on silicon carbide plates using special furnaces, resulting in epitaxial graphene combining with silicon carbide. According to the official blog of the Georgia Institute of Technology, this material took ten years to perfect. Their current tests show that the graphene-based semiconductor material exhibits ten times the electron mobility of silicon.

“So electrons in the material move with very low resistance, leading to faster calculations in electronics.”– announced in the press release of the institute.

De Heer explains the attractive properties of graphene-based electronics in a simpler way: “It’s like driving on a highway instead of a gravel road. HE [матеріал на основі графену] “It is more efficient, does not get too hot, and allows electrons to develop at a higher speed.”.

According to the scientists, their epitaxial graphene combined with silicon carbide is far superior to other 2D semiconductors under development. Professor de Geer described the research group’s breakthrough in the field of semiconductor materials as a “Wright Brothers moment” and emphasized the material’s compatibility with the quantum mechanical wave properties of electrons. In other words, it could play an important role in future advances in quantum computing.