Chapter 1 - Graphene—Technology and integration with semiconductor electronics

Abstract

Graphene is a wonderful material with superlative names. It is a two-dimensional (2D) material with hexagonal honeycomb lattice structure. Graphene is referred to as a semi-metal or zero-bandgap material because of lack of energy gap between its valence and conduction bands. The discovery of graphene has revolutionized the field of semiconductor electronics and very large-scale integration (VLSI). It has some remarkable features such as high carrier density and conductivity, low density of states (DOS), and excellent mechanical and optical properties. Owing to its low effective mass and degeneracy, graphene has been employed in the fabrication of tunneling devices such as graphene-based FETs. In this chapter, we have examined some of the features of graphene, synthesis methods, and its applications in graphene FETs, graphene nanoribbon (GNR) FETs, and GNR interconnects. Because graphene-based inductor has high quality factor, the design of graphene-based LC voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) for phase-locked loop is well proposed.