Graphene-based non-Boolean logic circuits

Graphene revealed a number of unique properties beneficial for electronics. However, graphene does not have an energy band-gap, which presents a serious hurdle for its applications in digital logic gates. The efforts to induce a band-gap in graphene via quantum confinement or surface functionalization have not resulted in a breakthrough. Here we show that the negative differential resistance experimentally observed in graphene field-effect transistors of conventional design allows for construction of viable non-Boolean computational architectures with the gapless graphene. The negative differential resistance-observed under certain biasing schemes-is an intrinsic property of graphene, resulting from its symmetric band structure. Our atomistic modeling shows that the negative differential resistance appears not only in the drift-diffusion regime but also in the ballistic regime at the nanometer-scale-although the physics changes. The obtained results present a conceptual change in graphene research and indicate an alternative route for graphene's applications in information processing. (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.