Graphene-based ambipolar electronics for radio frequency applications

Abstract

Graphene is considered as a promising material to construct field-effect transistors (FETs) for high frequency electronic applications due to its unique structure and properties, mainly including extremely high carrier mobility and saturation velocity, the ultimate thinnest body and stability. Through continuously scaling down the gate length and optimizing the structure, the cut-off frequency of graphene FET (GFET) was rapidly increased and up to about 300 GHz, and further improvements are also expected. Because of the lack of an intrinsic band gap, the GFETs present typical ambipolar transfer characteristic without off state, which means GFETs are suitable for analog electronics rather than digital applications. Taking advantage of the ambipolar characteristic, GFET is demonstrated as an excellent building block for ambipolar electronic circuits, and has been used in applications such as highperformance frequency doublers, radio frequency mixers, digital modulators, and phase detectors. Owing to the success isolation of single layer graphene by Novoselov et al. [4] in 2004, the obsolete point was broken down and a tremendous research field has been expanded based on the 2D material [5][6][7][8][9][10][11], and even the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded jointly to A. K. Geim and K. S. Novoselov "for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene" [12,13]. The special 2D structure of graphene provides a series of unique properties in mechanics, thermology, optics, and electronics [10,11,[14][15][16][17][18][19]. Graphene not only provides an experimental platform for basic physics, such as relativistic quantum mechanics (or quantum electrodynamics), which is due to the *Corresponding authors (email: zyzhang@pku.edu.cn; lmpeng@pku.edu.cn) massless property of the Dirac fermion behaved electrons in graphene [20][21][22], but also manifests promising application potential in numerous application fields, such as analog radio frequency (RF) field-effect transistors (FETs) [10,[23][24][25], flexible transparent electrodes and touch screen [26], photodetection [11,27,28], and spin transport [29,30]. In this review article, we will focus on the graphene based electronics and applications, especially RF performance of graphene and ambipolar electronics.

Assessing the Figures of Merit of Graphene-Based Radio Frequency Electronics: A Review of GFET in RF Technology

“…Many excellent reviews have summarized the progress of graphene field-effect transistors (GFETs), including material synthesis, material characterization, device fabrication, and characterization, as well as various GFETbased applications [5][6][7][8][9]. One of the best properties of a GFET is its ambipolar characteristics, and it is best used in RF components [10][11][12][13]. To date, several GFET-based RF components have been demonstrated, such as oscillators [14][15][16][17][18][19][20], phase shifters [21,22], amplifiers [23][24][25][26], mixers [27][28][29][30][31], and frequency multipliers [32,33].…”

Two-Dimensional Atomic Crystals: Paving New Ways for Nanoelectronics

“…Currently, graphene has been considered an excellent candidate for the next generation of high-frequency electronics. [35][36][37][38][39][40][41] The back-gate graphene transistor, in which a SiO 2 layer and a doped silicon substrate usually act as back-gate dielectric and the back-gate, respectively, is being studied by many researchers and will ne very useful in graphene nanoelectronics. Novoselov et al demonstrated the unique properties of graphene with a back-gate graphene transistor.…”

“…33 To overcome the parasitic capacitance of back-gate graphene transistors, the top-gate graphene transistor with a high cut-off frequency (f T ) and the maximum oscillation frequency (f max ) is preferred to realize the promising application of graphene in RF electronics. 5,7,8,39 Lemme et al reported the first top-gate graphene transistor, representing an important milestone and starting the field of graphene radio frequency (RF) devices. 42 Various configurations of graphene transistors have been reported in the past several years and the properties of graphene transistors have been greatly improved.…”

A facile approach to synthesize an oxo-functionalized graphene/polymer composite for low-voltage operating memory devices

“…[1][2][3][4][5][6] The good conductivity along with the low thickness allows for its application as transparent electrodes. 7 Field-effect transistors based on 2-dimensional materials have already been realized.…”