![An image of a completed integrated circuit made from graphene, with detail at top [image courtesy The New York Times].](https://cccblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Chip-popup.jpeg "An image of a completed integrated circuit made from graphene, with detail at top [image courtesy The New York Times].")
From a story published on The New York Times‘ website late yesterday:
IBM researchers said Thursday that they had designed high-speed circuits from graphene, an ultra-thin material that has a host of promising applications, from high-bandwidth communication to a new generation of low-cost smartphone and television displays.
The IBM advance, which the researchers reported in the journal Science, is a circuit known as a broadband frequency mixer that was built on a wafer of silicon. Widely used in all kinds of communications products, the circuits shift signals from one frequency to another.
In the Science paper, the IBM researchers describe a demonstration in which they deposited several layers of graphene on a silicon wafer, then created circuits based on graphene transistors and components known as inductors. They demonstrated frequency mixing up to speeds of 10 gigahertz.
In the past IBM has created stand-alone graphene transistors, but not complete electronic circuits.
The entire New York Times story is available here. Be sure to check out the original Science paper as well.
(Contributed by Erwin Gianchandani, CCC Director)
