Wide application feasibility report on graphene

Abstract

In 2005, Dennard scaling, which had hitherto delivered the performance enhancement of integrated circuit (IC) chips, completely collapsed. Hence, the need for new materials and material research emerged. Two-dimensional (2D) graphene emerged as a device material, and two-dimensional hexagonal boron nitride (BN) has emerged as the ideal substrate material. For the ongoing digital revolution to be sustained, petabit/second and exabit/second transmission links are needed. Graphene technology has matured to the level where functional graphene ICs on the wafer scale can be implemented, such as frequency multipliers, high-frequency graphene analog amplifiers and quaternary digital modulation circuits. These functional graphene ICs can be fabricated at the wafer scale because of the development of the imperfection-immune paradigm called very-large-scale-integration-compatible metallic carbon (C) nanotube removal technique. To harness the exotic properties of graphene nanomaterials in real-life applications at the macro scale, three-dimensional graphene-based monoliths have been developed, which could become the basis of future batteries and solar cells. Terahertz graphene chips will herald peta- and exabit rate optical fiber communication, which is the answer to the large data workload of the Internet. Graphene is emerging as an important thermoelectric material that is capable of converting temperature difference into electric current.