A design guide for future graphene chips

EPFL scientists have come up with a "how-to manual" for making the most efficient optical graphene circuits possible. The procedure facilitates and accelerates technological development in this future field. The research has been published in the scientific journal "Nature Photonics." Thanks to its amazing properties, graphene hold great promise as the basis for new chips that are faster, better-performing and more compact. For example, this material makes it possible to design systems that can either block electromagnetic radiation or allow it to pass, producing digital information analogous to the 1s and 0s of transistors. But up to now, it has been impossible to predict in advance these circuits' top potential efficiency. The two parameters that influence performance are the quality of the graphene, which depends on its atomic-scale structure, and the design of the circuit, which includes the other materials in the circuit, its geometry, and so on. Michele Tamagnone, a PhD student in professor Julien Perruisseau-Carrier's laboratory, has developed a new approach which allows the following conclusion: the maximum theoretical efficiency of the system is solely a function of the quality of the graphene.