"CHIPS: Nanotubes, flattened, create carbon films"

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology, in cooperation with the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in France, have flattened out carbon nanotubes into monofilms to create a new material they call "epitaxial graphene." The material has low-resistance electrodes, full lithographic compatibility and the ability to control the wave properties of electrons as well as their conventional electronic properties. Carbon nanotubes measure only 1.5 nanometers in diameter. When fabricated as the channel of an otherwise silicon transistor, nanotubes provide an avenue that traverses the semiconductor road map all the way to atomic dimensions. Unfortunately, the vast size difference between 1.5-nm-diameter nanotubes and the 65-nm features of state-of-the-art semiconductors today makes their electrodes overly ohmic, their lithography troublesome and their suceptibility to conventional pitfalls like parasitic capacitance acute. The new material can be integrated with lithographic silicon chip-processing steps, and has so far demonstrated features as small as 80 nm for a conventional field-effect transistor and a quantum interference device that manipulates electrons as waves.
Text: http://www.eetimes.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=184428520