IBM cleans the road for commercialization of graphene transistors

IBM Research says it has opened a bandgap for carbon-based graphene field-effect transistors (FETs), removing one of the last roadblocks to commercialization of the technology. By utilizing a dual-gate, bi-layer architecture, IBM said it demonstrated a graphene FET that could someday rival complementary metal oxide semiconductor.

"Graphene doesn't naturally have a bandgap, which is necessary for most electronic applications," said IBM Fellow Phaedon Avouris, who oversees the company's carbon-based materials efforts. "But now we can report tunable electrical bandgaps of up to 130meV for our bi-layer graphene FETs. And larger bandgaps are certainly feasible."

According to Avouris, this opens the possibility of future applications for graphene in digital electronics and in optoelectronics devices such as photodetectors, imaging and others.