Electronics Weekly Electronics Design & Components Tech News
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has developed a frequency multiplier made from a single grapheme transistor made from material one atom thick. The device can take an incoming signal and output a signal with double frequency without filtering.
“Researchers have been trying to find uses for this material since its discovery in 2004. I believe this application will have tremendous implications in high-frequency communications and electronics,” said Tomas Palacios, assistant professor at MIT’s department of electrical engineering, “it’s very difficult to generate high frequencies above 4 or 5 gigahertz,” he says but, by running several of the frequency-doubling chips in series, it should be possible to attain frequencies many times higher than are now feasible.
Graphene was discovered at Manchester in 2004. It is a mono-layer of carbon atoms that resembles nano-chicken wire. Effectively it is unrolled carbon nanotube which is a candidate for combining fast nano-carbon semiconductors with the planar process favoured by industry.
MIT says the technology has the capability of increasing processor speeds by 100 times delivering practical systems in the 500 to 1,000 gigahertz range. Key to the usefulness of graphene is the fact that electron mobility in graphene is 100 times faster than electron mobility in silicon.
While the work is still at the laboratory stage, it is mostly based on relatively standard chip processing technology. Using it to develop a commercial product “may take a year of work, maximum two,” says Palacios.
The project is currently being partially funded by the MIT Institute for Soldier Nanotechnology and by the Interconnect Focus Centre program, and it has already attracted the interest of “many other offices in the federal government and major chip-making companies,” says Palacios, “”in physics today, graphene is, arguably, the most exciting topic.”
See also: High-tech production processes ‘spectacularly inefficient’ – MIT
See also: Rensselaer is modelling graphene, Manchester is modifying it
