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ECE Professor Kaustav Banerjee’s work on 2D materials featured in Physics Today

Banerjee and colleagues at Harvard and Rice Universities author feature story, “Two-Dimensional van der Waals Materials,” published in the September 2016 issue of Physics Today

The article provides an overview of the physics, technology, and device applications of 2D materials including graphene and beyond-graphene 2D materials as well as their wide variety of heterostructures forming completely new materials known as “van der Waals solids”. The visionary article also discusses the prospects of employing such 2D materials for realizing layered nano- structures devices and circuits with atomic precision- a scientific dream of renowned physicist, Richard Feynman.

Professor Banerjee’s group have made seminal contributions toward advancing the understanding of 2D materials physics and uniquely exploited their properties in overcoming the limitations of conventional bulk materials (such as silicon and III-V semiconductors) for addressing power dissipation and other fundamental challenges in nanoscale transistors, interconnects and sensors. For example, a key device application highlighted in the article is a new class of transistors, the 3D/2D vertical heterostructure tunnel-field-effect-transistor demonstrated by Professor Banerjee’s group (Nature, 2015) that exhibits unprecedented low leakage currents and can switch with only 0.1 volts resulting in over 90% savings in power consumption.

Physics Today is the most influential and closely-followed physics magazine in the world, and more than 120,000 subscribers across the fields of STEM receive the publication every month. It is also the flagship publication of the American Institute of Physics that informs readers about science and its place in the world with authoritative features, news stories, analysis, and fresh perspectives on technological advances and ground-breaking research.

Physics Today – "Two-dimensional van der Waals Materials" (full article)

College of Engineering (news release) – "The State and Potential of Two-dimensional van der Waals Materials"

Banerjee's Nanoelectronics Research Lab