Analysis of graphene nanoribbons as a channel material for field-effect

transistors
B. Obradovic, R. Kotlyar, F. Heinz, P. Matagne, T. Rakshit et al.

Citation: Appl. Phys. Lett. 88, 142102 (2006); doi: 10.1063/1.2191420

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 APPLIED PHYSICS LETTERS 88, 142102 共2006兲

Analysis of graphene nanoribbons as a channel material

for field-effect transistors
B. Obradovic, R. Kotlyar, F. Heinz, P. Matagne, T. Rakshit, M. D. Giles, and M. A. Stettlera兲
Process Technology Modeling, Intel Corporation, Hillsboro, Oregon 97124
D. E. Nikonov
External Programs, Intel Corporation, Hillsboro, Oregon 97124
共Received 2 December 2005; accepted 6 March 2006; published online 3 April 2006兲
Electronic properties of graphene 共carbon兲 nanoribbons are studied and compared to those of carbon
nanotubes. The nanoribbons are found to have qualitatively similar electron band structure which
depends on chirality but with a significantly narrower band gap. The low- and high-field mobilities
of the nanoribbons are evaluated and found to be higher than those of carbon nanotubes for the same
unit cell but lower at matched band gap or carrier concentration. Due to the inverse relationship
between mobility and band gap, it is concluded that graphene nanoribbons operated as field-effect
transistors must have band gaps ⬍0.5 eV to achieve mobilities significantly higher than those of
silicon and thus may be better suited for low power applications. © 2006 American Institute of
Physics. 关DOI: 10.1063/1.2191420兴

Carbon nanotubes 共CNTs兲 have enjoyed a great deal of
attention in recent literature, in large part due to their poten-
tial to replace Si as the material of choice for the channel of
field-effect transistor 共FET兲 devices. Electron and hole mo-
bilities in CNTs have been measured and predicted to be
exceedingly high, to the point where CNT-based transistors
can be described as nearly ballistic. While the electronic
properties of CNTs are excellent for FET applications, no
straightforward way exists of patterning even simple CNT-
based circuits. At present, it appears that revolutionary ad-
vances in process technology are needed for large-scale in-
tegration of CNT devices.
A promising alternative to CNTs are graphene 共carbon兲
nanoribbons 共CNRs兲, which are essentially edge-terminated
graphene sheets. The CNRs are expected to have similar
electronic properties to CNTs, but they offer the possibility
of lithographic patterning on SiC substrates, potentially solv-
ing the major obstacle to large-scale integration.1 While vari-
ous terminations of the graphene sheet are possible, in this
work we focus on CNRs which are essentially “unrolled”
CNTs, oriented in various directions in order to establish
desired edge patterns of atoms. If we consider a CNR as
simply an unrolled CNT, we can describe them with a chiral
vector with indices 共n , m兲, much like CNTs.2,3 We focus pri-
marily on armchair CNRs, which are 共in this work兲 described
by chiral vectors 共n , 0兲, since they are expected to be semi-
conducting 共note that this corresponds to zigzag CNTs—
unlike CNTs, for CNRs the armchair/zigzag nomenclature
refers to the direction of the edge, not the chiral vector兲.
The electron band structures of the CNTs and CNRs are
constructed using the tight-binding 共TB兲 approach with the
pz orbital basis.2,3 Curvature of the CNTs is neglected. The
zone-folding approach is not used. Instead, the complete unit
cell of the CNT/CNR is used to construct the TB Hamil-
tonian, with periodic boundary conditions applied to the edge
atoms for the case of the nanotubes. In the case of the rib-
bons, the edge atoms have dangling bonds 共which lead to the
a兲
Electronic mail: mark.stettler@intel.com
formation of edge states in the gap for the zigzag but not the
armchair orientation2兲. Thus, the full band structure of the
ribbon is computed, including the effect of the dangling
bonds. Both the CNT and CNR are assumed to be infinite
and periodic in the transport direction. Furthermore, interac-
tions of the carbon atoms with the surrounding environment
are neglected.
Qualitatively, the CNR band structure is similar to that
of the CNT 共as shown in Refs. 1 and 2兲, with a band gap that
decreases with increasing width of the CNR. However, the
degeneracy of the nanotube levels is removed, and the “new”
levels are reduced in energy. This can be qualitatively under-
stood by examining the boundary conditions that the electron
states of CNTs and CNRs must obey. Since the CNT is a
periodic structure even in the azimuthal direction, the elec-
tron states must themselves be azimuthally periodic. This
forces the electron wave function to have at least one azi-
muthal node, since the contrary would imply a discontinuity
in the wave function slope. The CNR has no such restriction,
since the electron wave function at the edges of the CNR has
no requirement of periodicity. The additional nodes required
in the CNT electron states result in greater wave function
curvature and consequently a higher expectation value of the
kinetic energy. Thus, the CNR structure permits lower energy
modes than the CNT one. This then naturally translates into a
smaller band gap, as shown in Fig. 1.
The phonon band structure is calculated using the force-
constant dynamic-matrix approach.3 Interactions up to the
fourth nearest neighbor are included. For the purpose of this
work, simple boundary conditions are employed in which we
assume no coupling of the CNR atoms to the surrounding
material. A more thorough analysis would require the inclu-
sion of the complete SiC / SiO2 atomic neighborhood, but as
shown in the next paragraph, this does not qualitatively
change the results. Thus, the conditions for computing pho-
non dispersion relations are similar to those of nanotubes,
except for the lack of periodic boundary conditions on the
edge atoms 共which are taken to be free from outside forces兲.
As shown in Fig. 2, the resulting phonon dispersion relations
of CNTs and CNRs are qualitatively similar, though 共as in

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142102-2 Obradovic et al.
FIG. 1. The size dependence of the energy gap of CNRs and CNTs is
shown. The size of the CNR is simply the ribbon width, whereas for the
CNT it is the circumference of the tube. At matched width, CNRs have
significantly smaller band gaps.
the electron case兲 the degeneracy is lifted, and the transverse
energy contribution is reduced 共for the same reason as in the
electron case, the absence of the requirement of periodicity兲.
Also of note is the very similar behavior of the lowest three
modes 共near k = 0兲, which are distinguished by having no
transverse nodes 共for both CNTs and CNRs兲. They represent
three polarizations of modes in which the only spatial varia-
tion of the atomic displacements is along the transport direc-
tion 共all atoms within a unit cell have the same displacement
vector, modulo transport-direction-dependent phase factor兲
and are therefore not affected by the presence or absence of
periodic boundary conditions, as shown in Figs. 3 and 4. As
pointed out in Ref. 4 these are the phonons primarily respon-
sible for the low-field mobility behavior, so the details of the
phonon dispersion relations themselves are not expected to
have a dramatic impact on the mobility.
Following Refs. 4–6, we calculate the scattering rates
from Fermi’s golden rule and the electron-phonon Hamil-
tonian of Refs. 4 and 6. The overall low-field mobility is
computed using the Kubo-Greenwood formula, while the
high-field mobility and velocity curves are obtained through
Monte Carlo simulation 共as in Ref. 4兲. The selection rules
include the forward momentum and energy conservation, as
well as angular 共transverse兲 momentum in the case of CNTs.
We compute two cases for the CNRs, with and without the
transverse momentum selection rules, realizing that the
“true” value for the scattering rate is somewhere in between
the two extremes. The first case eliminates some available
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Appl. Phys. Lett. 88, 142102 共2006兲
FIG. 3. 共Color online兲 The lowest two phonon modes of the 共4,0兲 CNR are
shown. Arrows represent in-plane displacements, the discs represent out-of-
plane displacements. Solid discs are displacements out of the paper and
open discs displacements into the paper. The size of the discs and length of
the arrows indicate relative magnitude.
scattering events, while the latter includes unavailable ones.
A more detailed treatment of the problem should include the
effect of mechanical coupling and momentum transfer to the
surrounding Si atoms, but this is not expected to change the
qualitative results. Since we consider only armchair ribbons,
no edge states in the gap are present.2 Based on the electron
band structure, the expectation is that the CNR mobility is
considerably higher than the corresponding CNT mobility,
primarily due to the significantly higher group velocity in the
CNR. Furthermore, the twofold degeneracy of the lowest
electron bands is removed in CNRs, with a multi-kT separa-
tion of bands for small CNRs, thereby reducing the available
scattering density of states 共DOS兲. Both of these effects con-
spire to produce a higher CNR mobility at matched size/
chirality 共CNT perimeter= CNR width兲.
However, the technologically relevant comparison of
CNT and CNR mobilities is not at matched size but at
matched band gap. The band gap determines the applicability
of the material to thermionic injection FET devices 共since it
determines the parasitic band-to-band tunneling兲, as well as
the range of threshold voltages available for an ambipolar
device. Due to the significantly smaller band gap of the
CNR, a comparison of mobilities at matched band gap
FIG. 2. 共Color online兲 The phonon
dispersion relations for a 共4,0兲 CNT
共left兲 and 共4,0兲 CNR 共right兲 are shown
in the first Brillouin zone. The lowest
energy modes are similar; degeneracy
lifting and energy reduction are evi-
dent for the higher modes.
142102-3 Obradovic et al.
FIG. 4. 共Color online兲 The third and fourth phonon modes of the 共4,0兲 CNR.
Note that the fourth 共out-of-plane兲 mode clearly has nonperiodic boundary
conditions, not possible in the CNT.
strongly favors CNTs, as shown in Fig. 5. This qualitative
conclusion seems true in spite of the uncertainties introduced
by the phonon calculation, due to the sharp reduction in the
CNR band gap. As previously discussed, the mobilities of
both CNTs and CNRs increase with size 共decreasing band
gap兲 and converge on the essentially identical value for suf-
ficiently large size.
In the range of sizes/bandgaps of interest for conven-
tional FETs 共0.5– 1 eV兲, the CNR phonon mobility is not
dramatically higher than that of Si 共⬃400 cm2 / V s兲. If we
permit significantly smaller band gaps 共with correspondingly
smaller supply voltages兲, the CNRs become comparable to
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Appl. Phys. Lett. 88, 142102 共2006兲
FIG. 5. Comparison of CNR and CNT mobilities at matched band gap. Due
to the reduced CNR band gap, CNTs have considerably higher mobilities at
matched band gap. Phonon limited electron mobility in silicon under strong
inversion is also shown.
InSb high electron mobility transistor 共HEMT兲 devices, with
mobilities in the 10 000 cm2 / V s range and band gaps of
⬃200 meV. In conclusion, conventional FETs 共Eg0.5 V兲
built on CNRs will not have the nearly ballistic mobilities
usually associated with CNTs. This can only be achieved
with ⬍0.25 eV band gap devices, in which the mobilities are
expected to exceed 10 000 cm2 / V s.
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