High-Gain Graphene Transistors with a Thin AlOx Top-Gate Oxide.

The high-frequency performance of transistors is usually assessed by speed and gain figures of merit, such as the maximum oscillation frequency f max, cutoff frequency f T, ratio f max/f T, forward transmission coefficient S 21, and open-circuit voltage gain A v. All these figures of merit must be as large as possible for transistors to be useful in practical electronics applications. Here we demonstrate high-performance graphene field-effect transistors (GFETs) with a thin AlOx gate dielectric which outperform previous state-of-the-art GFETs: we obtained f max/f T > 3, A v > 30 dB, and S 21 = 12.5 dB (at 10 MHz and depending on the transistor geometry) from S-parameter measurements. A dc characterization of GFETs in ambient conditions reveals good current saturation and relatively large transconductance ~600 S/m. The realized GFETs offer the prospect of using graphene in a much wider range of electronic applications which require substantial gain.

On-Chip Magnetic Platform for Single-Particle Manipulation with Integrated Electrical Feedback.

Methods for the manipulation of single magnetic particles have become very interesting, in particular for in vitro biological studies. Most of these studies require an external microscope to provide the operator with feedback for controlling the particle motion, thus preventing the use of magnetic particles in high-throughput experiments. In this paper, a simple and compact system with integrated electrical feedback is presented, implementing in the very same device both the manipulation and detection of the transit of single particles. The proposed platform is based on zig-zag shaped magnetic nanostructures, where transverse magnetic domain walls are pinned at the corners and attract magnetic particles in suspension. By applying suitable external magnetic fields, the domain walls move to the nearest corner, thus causing the step by step displacement of the particles along the nanostructure. The very same structure is also employed for detecting the bead transit. Indeed, the presence of the magnetic particle in suspension over the domain wall affects the depinning field required for its displacement. This characteristic field can be monitored through anisotropic magnetoresistance measurements, thus implementing an integrated electrical feedback of the bead transit. In particular, the individual manipulation and detection of single 1-µm sized beads is demonstrated.

Scaling of graphene integrated circuits.

The influence of transistor size reduction (scaling) on the speed of realistic multi-stage integrated circuits (ICs) represents the main performance metric of a given transistor technology. Despite extensive interest in graphene electronics, scaling efforts have so far focused on individual transistors rather than multi-stage ICs. Here we study the scaling of graphene ICs based on transistors from 3.3 to 0.5 µm gate lengths and with different channel widths, access lengths, and lead thicknesses. The shortest gate delay of 31 ps per stage was obtained in sub-micron graphene ROs oscillating at 4.3 GHz, which is the highest oscillation frequency obtained in any strictly low-dimensional material to date. We also derived the fundamental Johnson limit, showing that scaled graphene ICs could be used at high frequencies in applications with small voltage swing.

Gigahertz integrated graphene ring oscillators.

Ring oscillators (ROs) are the most important class of circuits used to evaluate the performance limits of any digital technology. However, ROs based on low-dimensional nanomaterials (e.g., 1-D nanotubes, nanowires, 2-D MoS2) have so far exhibited limited performance due to low current drive or large parasitics. Here we demonstrate integrated ROs fabricated from wafer-scale graphene grown by chemical vapor deposition. The highest oscillation frequency was 1.28 GHz, while the largest output voltage swing was 0.57 V. Both values remain limited by parasitic capacitances in the circuit rather than intrinsic properties of the graphene transistor components, suggesting further improvements are possible. The fabricated ROs are the fastest realized in any low-dimensional nanomaterial to date and also the least sensitive to fluctuations in the supply voltage. They represent the first integrated graphene oscillators of any kind and can also be used in a wide range of applications in analog electronics. As a demonstration, we also realized the first stand-alone graphene mixers that do not require external oscillators for frequency conversion. The first gigahertz multitransistor graphene integrated circuits demonstrated here pave the way for application of graphene in high-speed digital and analog circuits in which high operating speed could be traded off against power consumption.

Cascading wafer-scale integrated graphene complementary inverters under ambient conditions.

The fundamental building blocks of digital electronics are logic gates which must be capable of cascading such that more complex logic functions can be realized. Here we demonstrate integrated graphene complementary inverters which operate with the same input and output voltage logic levels, thus allowing cascading. We obtain signal matching under ambient conditions with inverters fabricated from wafer-scale graphene grown by chemical vapor deposition (CVD). Monolayer graphene was incorporated in self-aligned field-effect transistors in which the top gate overlaps with the source and drain contacts. This results in full-channel gating and leads to the highest low-frequency voltage gain reported so far in top-gated CVD graphene devices operating in air ambient, A(v) ∼ -5. Such gain enabled logic inverters with the same voltage swing of 0.56 V at their input and output. Graphene inverters could find their way in realistic applications where high-speed operation is desired but power dissipation is not a concern, similar to emitter-coupled logic.