Graphene: Potential material for nanoelectronics applications

Abstract

Owing to Moore’s law and the advancements in microelectronics, the industry is shifting to nanoelectronics. The materials used for nanoelectronics applications are termed as nanomaterials recognized as the one which has at least one dimension less than 100 nm. Nanoelectronics allows bottom-up approach in contrast to the top-down approach adopted in microelectronics. So in nanoelectronics, the approach is to design systems using nanomaterials as basic building blocks. The importance of nanoelectronics is that different nanomaterials exhibit certain unusual properties not available at the micro scale. These unusual properties of the nanomaterials are utilized in a wide range of electronic applications like sensors, FETs, photovoltaic cells and many other exotic electronic devices applications. Graphene is one of the most recently discovered nanomaterial known for its exceptional mechanical, electrical, optical properties which are not found in any other material in the world. Being the thinnest, strongest, stiffest and the most conducting material in the world, therefore, its various applications are postulated in this review paper. A lot of research is being done around the world to find a graphene synthesis method which is facile, easy and economical so that graphene can be produced at large scale with least defects. Graphene is ready to replace silicon in almost all the semiconductor devices in order to enhance their capabilities. Till now graphene has been used in electronics applications like Li-ion batteries, photovoltaic cells, supercapacitors etc. In the present paper, various methods of synthesizing graphene, its properties, and work being carried out in the researcher’s laboratory is presented.