Barrier-Free Tunneling in a Carbon Heterojunction Transistor

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that a carbon heterojunction transistor utilizing a graphene nanoribbon and carbon nanotube can operate with ultra low-power consumption and high speed, surpassing classical energy limits through atomistic NEGF calculations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel all-carbon heterostructure transistor design that achieves barrier-free tunneling and ultra low-power operation using atomistic simulations.

Findings

Reduces energy dissipation below classical limits.

Maintains high operational speed.

Proposes a new pathway for ultra low-power electronics.

Abstract

Recently it has been experimentally shown that a graphene nanoribbon (GNR) can be obtained by unzipping a carbon nanotube (CNT). This makes it possible to fabricate all-carbon heterostructures that have a unique interface between a CNT and a GNR. Here we demonstrate that such a heterojunction may be utilized to obtain a unique transistor operation. By performing a self-consistent non-equilibrium Green's function (NEGF) based calculation on an atomistically defined structure, we show that such a transistor may reduce energy dissipation below the classical limit while not compromising speed - thus providing an alternate route towards ultra low-power, high-performance carbon-heterostructure electronics.