A Review of Graphene Nanoribbon Field-Effect Transistor Structures

The ascending trend of Moore's law has stretched to the horizon, where the prospects of carbon-based materials show the potential of replacing the silicon-based complementary metal-oxide semiconductor technology. These alternatives include nanowire transistors, carbon nanotube field-effect transistors, quantum-dot cellular automata, and graphene nanoribbon field-effect transistors (GNRFETs). This paper presents a review of the evolution of graphene, its fabrication process, and graphene-based field-effect transistor device structures. The diverse features of graphene as a material are derived from its structural, electronic, and thermal properties. A brief review of the techniques utilized for the fabrication of GNRFETs is mentioned in this paper. GNRFETs are based on excellent electrical properties that include strong ballistic transport, high current ratio, better compatibility with high K dielectrics, high electron mobility, reliability, scalability, and transconductance. GNRFET structures are reviewed for several aspects which include the I-on/I-off ratio, subthreshold swing, oxide thickness, high K dielectrics, etc. that help to monitor the improvement in the performance of GNRFET devices. A comparison of the structures is presented to help researchers have a fair idea of the impact of modifications on device performance. The compact model used to simulate GNRFET-based devices is also included in this paper. GNRFET-based devices have several applications to offer in the current scenario. This paper also reports several applications of present GNRFET-based devices.