Barrier-free tunneling in a carbon heterojunction transistor

Recently it has been experimentally shown that a graphene nanoribbon (GNR) can be obtained by unzipping a carbon nanotube (CNT). This makes it possible to fabricate all-carbon heterostructures that have a unique interface between a CNT and a GNR. Here we demonstrate that such a heterojunction may be utilized to obtain a unique transistor operation. By performing a self-consistent nonequilibrium Green's function based calculation on an atomistically defined structure, we show that such a transistor may reduce energy dissipation below the classical limit while not compromising speed-thus providing an alternate route toward ultralow-power, high-performance carbon-heterostructure electronics. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3431661]