Post by williamplayer on Apr 23, 2014 11:29:00 GMT
Samsung’s Graphene Breakthrough could Finally put the Wonder Material into Real-World Devices
Samsung, which until now has been very quiet on the graphene front, appears to have discovered the holy grail of commercial graphene production: A new technique that can grow high-quality single-crystal graphene on silicon wafers — graphene that is suitable for the production of graphene field-effect transistors (GFETs) — and afterward, once the graphene has been peeled off, the silicon wafers can even be reused! Samsung is dressing this up as a breakthrough for flexible, wearable computers — which is fair enough, given the company’s recent focus on curved smartphones and watches.
This work, carried out by the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT) and Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea, is rather advanced — so stick with me while I try to explain it. Basically, they start with a normal silicon wafer. They coat the wafer in a layer of germanium (Ge), and then dip the wafer in dilute hydrofluoric (HF) acid, which strips off the native (naturally forming) germanium oxide groups, leaving a “sea” of hydrogen atoms that are bonded to the germanium underneath (H-terminated germanium, in chemistry speak). The wafer is then placed into furnace, where fairly normal chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is used to deposit a layer of graphene on top of the H-terminated Ge. Finally, after a bit more baking, and cooling under vacuum, the graphene is ready to be peeled off and used in the fabrication of graphene transistors and other such devices.
Read Full Article: www.extremetech.com/extreme/179874-samsungs-graphene-breakthrough-could-finally-put-the-wonder-material-into-real-world-devices
Read Research Paper: www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2014/04/02/science.1252268.abstract
Samsung, which until now has been very quiet on the graphene front, appears to have discovered the holy grail of commercial graphene production: A new technique that can grow high-quality single-crystal graphene on silicon wafers — graphene that is suitable for the production of graphene field-effect transistors (GFETs) — and afterward, once the graphene has been peeled off, the silicon wafers can even be reused! Samsung is dressing this up as a breakthrough for flexible, wearable computers — which is fair enough, given the company’s recent focus on curved smartphones and watches.
This work, carried out by the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT) and Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea, is rather advanced — so stick with me while I try to explain it. Basically, they start with a normal silicon wafer. They coat the wafer in a layer of germanium (Ge), and then dip the wafer in dilute hydrofluoric (HF) acid, which strips off the native (naturally forming) germanium oxide groups, leaving a “sea” of hydrogen atoms that are bonded to the germanium underneath (H-terminated germanium, in chemistry speak). The wafer is then placed into furnace, where fairly normal chemical vapor deposition (CVD) is used to deposit a layer of graphene on top of the H-terminated Ge. Finally, after a bit more baking, and cooling under vacuum, the graphene is ready to be peeled off and used in the fabrication of graphene transistors and other such devices.
Read Full Article: www.extremetech.com/extreme/179874-samsungs-graphene-breakthrough-could-finally-put-the-wonder-material-into-real-world-devices
Read Research Paper: www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2014/04/02/science.1252268.abstract