20 Mb/s Zero-power graphene-on-glass microwave envelope detectors for ubiquitous ultra-low-power wireless network

We report the first experimental results of single graphene-on-glass FET-based envelope detectors operating at digital communication data rate of 20 Mb/s with RF carrier frequency above 5 GHz. The new ambipolar GFET envelope detectors operated with zero power consumption, which is potentially ideal for ultra-low-power wireless networks. GFET ambipolar envelope detectors offer excellent 40 dB linear dynamic range over the incoming RF power with sensitivity down to -60 dBm. For the first time, we demonstrated that the ambipolar nature of graphene FETs offer performance advantages over state-of-the-art CMOS FET-based envelope detector ICs for ultra-low-power wireless communications. With graphene's transferability to any substrate, further development of GFETs could potentially deliver higher data rates to ubiquitous ULP communication platforms.