MATTHEW PEACH GRAPHENE
WHAT IS GRAPHENE? Jesus de La Fuente, CEO Graphenea (a company established in 2010, which is a partner of the Graphene Flagship) described the special form of carbon known as graphene and how it o ers a variety of technical benefits: “At one atom thick, graphene is the thinnest compound known to man, and the lightest known material (1 square meter weighs just 0.77mg). “It is also the strongest material so far discovered, being between 100-300 times stronger than steel and with a tensile sti ness of 150,000,000 psi. Graphene is also the best conductor of heat at room temperature and the best conductor of electricity known. “Other notable properties of graphene are its unique levels of light absorption at pi-alpha approximately equal to 2.3% of white light, and its potential suitability for use in spin transport.”
Talking further about the Graphene Flagship and its collaborative approach to research, Professor Ferrari commented “Graphene can beat current silicon photonic technology in terms of energy consumption. The Graphene Flagship is investing a lot of resources into wafer- scale integration with the creation of a new Work Package. “We have identified a vision, where graphene is the backbone for data communication, and we plan to have a telecommunication bank capable of transferring 4x28 GB/s by 2018. The research in this Nano Letters paper is the first step towards achieving that vision, the importance of which is clearly recognised by companies such as Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent who have joined the Flagship to help develop it.” “We have shown the potential for the detector but we also need to produce a graphene-based modulator to have a full, low energy optical telecommunication system and the Flagship is working hard on this problem. The Flagship has collected the right people in the right place at the right time to work together towards this goal. Europe will be at the cutting edge of this technology. “It is a great challenge, and a great opportunity for Europe, as there is such high added value to the devices it will be cost e ective to manufacture the device in Europe - keeping the value of the technology within the European community,” added Professor Ferrari.
have been able to make fully functioning devices on chips using this process. However, this process is complex. TECHNICAL DETAILS In the new paper, graphene is interfaced with silicon on chip to make high responsivity Schottky barrier photodetectors. These graphene- based photodetectors achieve 0.37A/W responsivity at 1.55µm using avalanche multiplication. This high responsivity is comparable to that of the Silicon Germanium detectors currently used in silicon photonics. Professor Andrea Ferrari from the Cambridge Graphene Centre, who is also the Science and Technology O cer and the Chair of the Management Panel for the Graphene Flagship stated; “This is a significant result which proves that graphene can compete with the current state of the art by producing devices that can be made more simply, cheaply and work at di erent wavelengths. Thus paving the way for graphene integrated silicon photonics.” Dr Ilya Goykhman, from the University of Cambridge, and the paper’s lead author, said; “The vision here is for graphene to play an important part in enabling optical communication technologies. This is a first step towards this, and, over the next two years the aim of the wafer-scale integration and optoelectronics work- packages of the Flagship is to really make this happen”.
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ISSUE 7 | Q3 2016
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