WHY IS GRAPHENE THE MOST LIKELY ALTERNATIVE TO SILICON?

With the strengthening of global environmental awareness, people pay more attention to energy-saving, environmental protection and sustainable new materials. As a new material, graphene has the reputation of "king of new materials". Thin and hard graphene is the first choice material in many fields. At the same time, it has very good electrical properties and is a revolutionary material for the future innovation and development of electronic industry.

Silicon is the most widely used semiconductor material nowadays. In addition to its semiconductor properties, graphene also has many other advantages that silicon does not have. Experts predict that graphene is likely to become the best alternative to silicon, which depends on its industrial development. Because the processing limit of silicon material is considered to be 10 nm linewidth, in other words, with the process less than 10 nm, it is difficult to produce stable silicon products. In order to achieve higher integration and performance of products, new semiconductor materials must be used for processing. Graphene is a new choice.

Graphene has a broad application prospect in semiconductor industry

Semiconductor industry is mainly composed of integrated circuits, optoelectronics, discrete devices and sensors. A new semiconductor material needs to follow many rules if it wants to be recognized by the market. Photoelectric effect and Hall Effect are the most important two laws. Scientists have observed the quantum Hall effect of graphene at room temperature. When the material encounters impurities, it will not generate back scattering, which shows that it has strong conductivity. Because graphene looks almost transparent, its optical properties are excellent, and its optical properties change with the change of graphene thickness, which is very suitable for application in the field of optoelectronics. In the future, graphene materials may be used in display screen, capacitor, photosensitive element, transistor, sensor and other fields.

1. Flexible display screen

Flexible display screen is very promising electronic equipment, its characteristics are super soft, ultra-thin, and so on. The key to its development is the material. The characteristics of graphene material make people have a new understanding of the future of flexible display screen. In recent years, the world is actively exploring related technologies. It is reported that South Korea has made a flexible and transparent display screen composed of multilayer graphene and glass fiber polyester sheet substrate. Chinese company uses graphene for display technology and has made a graphene electronic display screen, which is resistant to falling, collision, high transmittance and very good brightness. The transparency and flexibility of graphene have a bright future in flexible display industry.

2. Capacitor

Capacitor is one of the most common electronic components. It is widely used in various circuits. Its main function is to achieve tuning, filtering, coupling and separation of direct cross. Many electronic devices have capacitors. With the requirement of charging rate and capacity, a new type of super capacitor emerges. It is understood that researchers have invented a kind of capacitor with graphene as electrode material, which is composed of two layers of graphene. The supercapacitor based on graphene has excellent performance in charging and discharging, which is very suitable for the charging and discharging of new energy vehicles.

3. Photosensitive element

Photoreceptors are widely used in digital cameras. The optical properties of graphene make people full of expectations for the photoreceptors of this material. Graphene has unique optical properties and can be tuned to electricity. Under special illumination, graphene has a nonlinear optical nonlinear Kerr effect of phase-shifting. According to foreign media reports, some researchers in Singapore used graphene materials to make a special photosensitive element, which has super sensitivity. Because graphene photosensitive element can detect broad-spectrum light, its advantages are very obvious in the case of weak light.

4. Transistor

Transistor is a kind of solid semiconductor device, which plays an irreplaceable role in rectifying, amplifying, stabilizing voltage and signal modulation. Graphene material can also be used to make transistors. Compared with the transistors made of silicon material, the super stability of graphene makes its life longer and its application more extensive. It is understood that IBM made a graphene transistor in 2010, which is far superior to similar silicon transistors and has a bright future.

5. Sensor

The sensor is almost the "standard" product in the information age. The sensor made of graphene has great advantages because its sensitivity can be far superior to similar products. Graphene has a unique two-dimensional structure, which makes it very sensitive to the surrounding environment. In medicine, the sensitivity of graphene sensor can detect many medical records, which is because of its Nano characteristics and sensitivity, many traditional sensors cannot achieve.