Projected Performance Advantage of Multilayer Graphene Nanoribbon as Transistor Channel Material

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the potential of multilayer graphene nanoribbon FETs, showing they can outperform carbon nanotube FETs in current capacity, especially with optimized stacking and weak interlayer coupling.

Contribution

It demonstrates that multilayer GNR FETs with specific stacking and weak interlayer coupling can significantly surpass CNT FETs in performance.

Findings

Multilayer GNR FETs outperform CNT FETs in ballistic on-current.

Weak interlayer coupling enhances GNR FET performance.

Incommensurate stacking improves GNR FET efficiency.

Abstract

The performance limits of the multilayer graphene nanoribbon (GNR) field-effect transistor (FET) are assessed and compared to those of monolayer GNR FET and carbon nanotube (CNT) FET. The results show that with a thin high-k gate insulator and reduced interlayer coupling, multilayer GNR FET can significantly outperform its CNT counterpart with a similar gate and bandgap in terms of the ballistic on-current. In the presence of optical phonon scattering, which has a short mean free path in the graphene-derived nanostructures, the advantage of the multilayer GNRFET is even more significant. The simulation results indicate multilayer GNRs with incommensurate non-AB stacking and weak interlayer coupling are the best candidate for high performance GNR FETs.