IBM showcases its fastest graphene transistor

IBM demonstrated to the media its fastest graphene transistor, which can perform 155 billion cycles per second, 50% faster than previous test transistors.

The cut-off frequency of this transistor is 155GHz, making it faster and at the same time more powerful than IBM's 100GHz graphene transistor exhibited last February.

The development of this transistor is IBM to undertake the mission of the US Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, research and development of high-performance radio frequency transistors, the military is very interested. At present, it is not yet fully applicable to PCs. Because of the lack of energy gaps in natural graphene, graphene transistors do not have the switching ratio required for digital switching operations, and thus are inferior to conventional processors in processing discrete digital signals.

IBM researcher Lin Yuming said that graphene transistors have lower cost and can exhibit excellent performance in the standard semiconductor production process, providing direction for the commercial production of graphene chips for wireless communication, networking, radar and Imagery and other fields.

In contrast, the continuous energy gap of graphene makes it more capable of processing analog signals. By using IBM's improved "diamond-like carbon," graphene transistors have greater temperature stability. At the same time, it is also IBM's smallest transistor to date, the strobe width has been reduced from 550 nm to 40 nm, and last year's product width was 240 nm.