R. Colin Johnson
EE Times

PORTLAND, Ore.—Graphene will carry nearly 1,000-times more current and run over 10-times cooler than conventional copper interconnects below 22-nanometer line widths, according to researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech).

The speed (electron mobility) of graphene has already been touted as better than copper, but this Georgia Tech data on nanoribbons as small as 16-nanometers quantifies just how superior carbon is to copper. The graphene nanoribbons tested at Georgia Tech could carry as much as 10 billion amps per square centimeter—nearly a thousand times greater than copper.

"No one had measured graphene's current carrying capacity before this," said Raghunath Murali, a senior research engineer in Georgia Tech's Nanotechnology Research Center. "One possible reason that this property of graphene was not touted before is that there were no experimental results until our work."

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