Combination of graphene and silicon to drive the next wave in semiconductors

To jump off the wall, where the Silicon is hit by severe limitation in miniaturization using photolithography techniques, the semiconductor industry is pinning huge hope on new material Graphene, which holds the commercially and technically beneficial characteristics/properties. The world's second biggest chip maker Samsung in partnership with Sungkyunkwan University, have developed a new synthesis method to speed the commercialization of graphene. This breakthrough is first such graphene synthesis in the world as claimed by Samsung. The new method of growing large area, single crystal wafer scale graphene synthesizes large-area graphene into a single crystal on a semiconductor, maintaining its electric and mechanical properties. The new method repeatedly synthesizes single crystal graphene on the current semiconductor wafer scale. Carbon material graphene can be built in atomic thickness (an atom or two atom thick graphene sheets can be prepared) but the challenge here is to make graphene work like electronic devices such as diode, transistor, MOSFET, and also wiring them as electronic circuits. There is some progress made recently in graphene based electronic devices & circuits. To make devices out of graphene, the graphene material is deposited over another thin material, which can be insulator or even a semiconductor material such as SiC (Silicon Carbide). To...