Seminar :: January 17 :: Ramiro Moro

Ramiro Moro, PhD

Department of Physics, University of Louisiana at Lafayette

Semiconducting Epitaxial Graphene, a Potential Platform for Nanoelectronics

The effort to develop epi-graphene for nanoelectronics started in 2001 at Georgia Tech as an extension of work done with carbon nanotubes and fullerenes in Dr. Walt de Heer’s research group. Graphene has several advantages to conventional electronic materials such as its ballistic transport, robust structure, and its ability to be tailored by topology. However, two hurdles to overcome were the difficulty in creating ordered edge states and the absence of an energy gap. The observation in 2014 of micrometer coherence lengths in nanopatterned ribbons solved the first issue. Now the second problem has been answered with the manufacture of semiconducting epitaxial graphene (SEG) by a joint effort of Tianjin University and Georgia Tech [1]. SEG can be considered a crystalline, ordered form of the graphitic buffer layer previously studied. Its ultra-high mobility, sizeable 0.6eV gap, patternable structure, and compatibility with semimetal graphene make it a candidate for electronics beyond silicon.

The recently published paper with the research described above can be found here.