Field-Effect Tunneling Transistor Based on Vertical Graphene Heterostructures

Tunnel Barriers for Graphene Transistors Transistor operation for integrated circuits not only requires that the gate material has high-charge carrier mobility, but that there is also an effective way of creating a barrier to current flow so that the device can be switched off and not waste power. Graphene offers high carrier mobility, but the shape of its conduction and valence bands enables electron tunneling and makes it difficult to achieve low currents in an “off” state. Britnell et al. (p. 947 , published online 2 February) have fabricated field-effect transistors in which a thin tunneling barrier created from a layered material—either hexagonal boron nitride or molybdenum disulfide—is sandwiched between graphene sheets. These devices exhibit on-off switching ratios of ≈50 and ≈10,000, respectively, at room temperature.