CVD enabled Graphene Technology and Devices (GRAPHTED)

石墨烯是一层只有一个原子厚的石墨。作为一种全新的材料，它不仅是有史以来最薄的，而且也是最坚固的。它几乎是完全透明的，但作为导电体，它的性能和铜一样好，甚至比铜更好。自2010年诺贝尔物理学奖授予该领域的英国研究人员以来，石墨烯的基础研究吸引了世界各地的工业界和政府的大量投资，并创造了前所未有的兴奋。对于石墨烯的广泛应用，已经有许多概念验证演示。许多应用需要高质量的材料，然而，迄今为止，大多数高质量的石墨烯是用透明胶带从石墨薄片上剥离而成的。这不是一条可制造的路线，因为以这种方式生产石墨烯的成本过高，相当于每12英寸晶圆100亿英镑。为了使高质量的石墨烯具有商业可行性，其价格需要降低到每片30-100英镑，即1亿倍。因此，石墨烯的生产和加工技术是释放其巨大应用潜力的关键瓶颈。克服这一瓶颈是这一建议的核心。我们的提案旨在开发石墨烯的潜力，使其成为一种强大的颠覆性技术。我们将使用一种称为化学气相沉积（CVD）的生长方法作为关键推动者，并解决工业材料发展的关键问题。CVD是将金刚石、碳纳米管和氮化镓推向工业规模生产的生长方法。在这里，它将被开发用于石墨烯，因为CVD有潜力以低成本在大面积上提供石墨烯，并且质量相当于最好的剥离薄片。CVD也是一种非常通用的工艺，可以采用新颖的策略将石墨烯与其他材料集成到器件架构中。通过与英国爱思强、飞利浦、英特尔、泰雷兹和Selex Galileo等领先的工业合作伙伴的合作，我们将为近期和未来的各种应用开发新的集成路线，在这些应用中，石墨烯可以超越当前的材料，并允许使用以前不可能的设备形状因素和功能。例如，我们将把石墨烯作为透明导体集成到有机发光二极管中，为普通照明提供新的、高效和环保的解决方案，包括灵活的外形因素，可以彻底改变传统的照明设计。我们还将把石墨烯集成到液晶器件中，提供超高分辨率和新型光存储系统。与目前使用的材料不同，石墨烯在红外范围内也是透明的，这对于我们将探索的航空电子，军事成像和消防安全中的许多传感应用非常感兴趣。此外，我们建议开发一种碳基互连技术，以克服铜对下一代微电子技术的限制。这是半导体行业发展道路上的一个重要里程碑。作为一项潜在的颠覆性未来技术，我们建议将石墨烯集成到所谓的芯片实验室设备中，以适应快速的单分子生物传感。这些预测将彻底改变临床分析，特别是关于DNA和蛋白质结构的测定。

Graphene is a single layer of graphite just one atom thick. As a material it is completely new - not only the thinnest ever but also the strongest. It is almost completely transparent, yet as a conductor of electricity it performs as well or even better than copper. Since the 2010 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to UK researchers in this field, fundamental graphene research has attracted much investment by industry and governments around the world, and has created unprecedented excitement. There have been numerous proof-of concept demonstrations for a wide range of applications for graphene. Many applications require high quality material, however, most high quality graphene to date is made by exfoliation with scotch tape from graphite flakes. This is not a manufacturable route as graphene produced this way is prohibitively expensive, equivalent to £10bn per 12" wafer. For high quality graphene to become commercially viable, its price needs to be reduced to £30-100 per wafer, a factor of 100 million. Hence graphene production and process technology is the key bottleneck to be overcome in order to unlock its huge application potential. Overcoming this bottleneck lies at the heart of this proposal. Our proposal aims to develop the potential of graphene into a robust and disruptive technology. We will use a growth method called chemical vapour deposition (CVD) as the key enabler, and address the key questions of industrial materials development. CVD was the growth method that opened up diamond, carbon nanotubes and GaN to industrial scale production. Here it will be developed for graphene as CVD has the potential to give graphene over large areas at low cost and at a quality that equals that of the best exfoliated flakes. CVD is also a quite versatile process that enables novel strategies to integrate graphene with other materials into device architectures. In collaboration with leading industrial partners Aixtron UK, Philips, Intel, Thales and Selex Galileo, we will develop novel integration routes for a diverse set of near-term as well as future applications, for which graphene can outperform current materials and allows the use of previously impossible device form factors and functionality. We will integrate graphene for instance as a transparent conductor into organic light emitting diodes that offer new, efficient and environmentally friendly solutions for general lighting, including a flexible form factor that could revolutionize traditional lighting designs. We will also integrate graphene into liquid crystal devices that offer ultra high resolution and novel optical storage systems. Unlike currently used materials, graphene is also transparent in the infrared range, which is of great interest for many sensing applications in avionics, military imaging and fire safety which we will explore. Furthermore, we propose to develop a carbon based interconnect technology to overcome the limitations Cu poses for next generation microelectronics. This is a key milestone in the semiconductor industry roadmap. As a potential disruptive future technology, we propose to integrate graphene into so called lab-on-a-chip devices tailored to rapid single-molecule biosensing. These are predicted to revolutionize clinical analysis in particular regarding DNA and protein structure determination.