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Semiconductors – Making contact

An ORNL-led team formed seamless interfaces between graphene ribbons with different widths, creating a staircase configuration. This configuration has seamless electrical contacts, making the material viable as a building block for next-generation electronic devices. Credit: Chuanxu Ma and An-Ping Li/Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy

November 2, 2017 – A new approach developed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory creates seamless electrical contacts between precisely controlled nanoribbons of graphene, making the material viable as a building block for next-generation electronic devices. In a recent study, an ORNL-led team grew the popular, atomic-thick semi-metallic graphene material as semiconducting ribbons, constructed from the bottom up using a precise number of atoms across and a precise molecular structure at the edge. To be more useful in electronics, the team focused efforts on forming seamless interfaces between ribbons with different widths, which created a staircase configuration. “This novel configuration allows us to adjust the energy gap, tune the energy level alignment and direct the flow of electricity through the materials,” said An-Ping Li, ORNL coauthor of a study published in Nano Letters that describes the approach.