Overview

The South West Academy of Nanoelectronics (SWAN) center, led by the University of Texas at Austin, includes members from Harvard, UT-Dallas, Texas A&M, North Carolina State, UC-San Diego.

Currently the Bilayer Pseudospin Field Effect Transistor (BiSFET) appears to be one of the promising devices in the NRI repertoire in terms of power consumption and speed. SWAN has established a synergistic program involving theory and experiment to work on graphene-based BiSFETs, and related concepts. We will try to determine theoretically and experimentally if the Bose condensate postulated in gated, coupled bilayer graphene systems can survive at room temperature. We will have significant efforts in graphene materials synthesis, gate dielectrics on graphene, ohmic contacts to graphene and process integration which should have an impact on other related graphene based devices also.  For instance, we will explore device concepts based on single particle, bare 2D-to-2D Interlayer Tunnel FETs (ITFETs) in the gated coupled graphene bilayers systems. We will study circuit and architecture challenges related to the BiSFET in logic, memory and analog/mixed signal applications.We will also expand activities into other 2D systems including topological insulators and transition metal dichalcogenides for potential applications in BiSFETs, ITFETs and  spintronics. Spintronics will be investigated based on Topological Insulators and Magneto Electric (TIME) devices.

Research Focus

Research projects in the SWAN center are broken down into these themes:

• Bilayer PseudoSpin Field Effect Transistors (BiSFETs)
• Interlayer Tunnel FETs (ITFETs)
• Topological Insulator Magneto-Electronics (TIME)
• Surface Science of Graphene Analogs