Multilayer graphene nanoribbon for 3D stacking of the transistor channel

The graphene nanoribbon (GNR) transistor suffers from the problem of a low on-current due to the nanometer-wide channel. In this work, a self-consistent atomistic simulation is performed to explore the possibility of boosting the ballistic on-current of the GNRFET by using the experimentally accessible multilayer GNR, which provides a natural structure for 3D stacking of the transistor channel. The effects of the number of graphene layers and interlayer coupling strength are studied under different gating technologies. Only limited improvement of the on-current can be achieved with a typical bottom gate because of the small gate insulator capacitance. With a high-¿ gate, the improvement of the multilayer channel, however, is significant. Reducing the interlayer coupling can further increase the on-current by a factor of 2 for a 5-layer GNR channel.