Terahertz waves are expected to be used in next-generation communications, detection, and other fields due to their unique characteristics. As a basic part of the terahertz application system, the terahertz detector plays a key role in terahertz technology. Due to the two-dimensional structure, graphene has unique characteristics features, such as exceptionally high electron mobility, zero band-gap, and frequency-independent spectral absorption, particularly in the terahertz region, making it a suitable material for terahertz detectors. In this review, the recent progress of graphene terahertz detectors related to photovoltaic effect (PV), photothermoelectric effect (PTE), bolometric effect, and plasma wave resonance are introduced and discussed.

Two-dimensional (2D) MoS₂ have attracted tremendous attention due to their potential applications in future flexible high-frequency electronics. Bilayer MoS₂ exhibits the advantages of carrier mobility when compared with monolayer mobility, thus making the former more suitable for use in future flexible high-frequency electronics. However, there are fewer systematical studies of chemical vapor deposition (CVD) bilayer MoS₂ radiofrequency (RF) transistors on flexible polyimide substrates. In this work, CVD bilayer MoS₂ RF transistors on flexible substrates with different gate lengths and gigahertz flexible frequency mixers were constructed and systematically studied. The extrinsic cutoff frequency (f_T) and maximum oscillation frequency (f_max) increased with reducing gate lengths. From transistors with a gate length of 0.3 μm, we demonstrated an extrinsic f_T of 4 GHz and f_max of 10 GHz. Furthermore, statistical analysis of 14 flexible MoS₂ RF transistors is presented in this work. The study of a flexible mixer demonstrates the dependence of conversion gain versus gate voltage, LO power and input signal frequency. These results present the potential of CVD bilayer MoS₂ for future flexible high-frequency electronics.

A high emission current with relatively low operating voltage is critical for field emission cathodes in vacuum electronic devices (VEDs). This paper studied the field emission performance of single-wall carbon nanotube (SWCNT) cold cathodes prepared by screen printing with a silver paste buffer layer. The buffer layer can both enforce the adhesion between the SWCNTs and substrate, and decrease their contact resistance, so as to increase emission current. Compared with paste mixing CNTs and screen printed cathodes, the buffer layer can avoid excessive wrapping of CNTs in the silver slurry and increase effective emission area to reduce the operating voltage. The experimental results show that the turn-on field of the screen-printed SWCNT cathodes is 0.9 V/μm, which is lower than that of electrophoretic SWCNT cathodes at 2.0 V/μm. Meanwhile, the maximum emission current of the screen-printed SWCNT cathodes reaches 5.55 mA at DC mode and reaches 10.4 mA at pulse mode, which is an order magnitude higher than that of electrophoretic SWCNTs emitters. This study also shows the application insight of small or medium-power VEDs.

As an atomically thin semiconductor, 2D molybdenum disulfide (MoS₂) has demonstrated great potential in realizing next-generation logic circuits, radio-frequency (RF) devices and flexible electronics. Although various methods have been performed to improve the high-frequency characteristics of MoS₂ RF transistors, the impact of the back-gate bias on dual-gate MoS₂ RF transistors is still unexplored. In this work, we study the effect of back-gate control on the static and RF performance metrics of MoS₂ high-frequency transistors. By using high-quality chemical vapor deposited bilayer MoS₂ as channel material, high-performance top-gate transistors with on/off ratio of 10⁷ and on-current up to 179 μA/μm at room temperature were realized. With the back-gate modulation, the source and drain contact resistances decrease to 1.99 kΩ∙μm at V_bg = 3 V, and the corresponding on-current increases to 278 μA/μm. Furthermore, both cut-off frequency and maximum oscillation frequency improves as the back-gate voltage increases to 3 V. In addition, a maximum intrinsic f_max of 29.7 GHz was achieved, which is as high as 2.1 times the f_max without the back-gate bias. This work provides significant insights into the influence of back-gate voltage on MoS₂ RF transistors and presents the potential of dual-gate MoS₂ RF transistors for future high-frequency applications.

To design efficient and powerful field emission cathodes, the screening effect is of great importance and should be traded off between screening and emitter number. It has long been found that to achieve maximum emission efficiency in an array, neighboring emitters are at two or three times their height from each other. However, this is only true for one-dimensional emitters, such as carbon nanotubes, but for graphene, a two-dimensional material, it is different. In this work, we found that to achieve maximum emission efficiency in an array of graphene, the separation of the emitter is four times the height, and it is insensitive to the anode voltage and the distance between the cathode and the anode.

Single-crystal graphene has attracted much attention due to its excellent electrical properties in recent years, and many growth methods have been proposed, including the copper pockets method. In the copper pockets method, a piece of copper foil is folded into a pocket and put into a chemical vapor deposition (CVD) system for the growth of graphene. The dynamic balance of evaporation and deposition of copper on the inner surfaces of the copper pockets avoids high surface roughness caused by the evaporation of copper in open space, such as the outer surfaces of copper pockets. Much lower partial pressure of methane in the copper pockets and lower surface roughness reduce the nucleation density of graphene and increase the size of single-crystal graphene. It is found that the growth pressure is closely related to the size of single-crystal graphene prepared by the copper pockets method; the higher the growth pressure, the larger the size of single-crystal graphene. It is also found that the growth pressure has an effect on the inner surface roughness of the copper pockets, but the effect is not significant. The main factor affecting the size of the single-crystal graphene is the change in the volume of the copper pockets caused by the change in the growth pressure, and the volume of the copper pockets determines the content of methane in the copper pockets. According to the above law, the size of single-crystal graphene prepared by the copper pockets method can be enlarged by increasing the growth pressure. The size of single-crystal graphene can be enlarged in a wide range as the growth pressure can be increased in a wide range. In our experiments, when the growth pressure reached 450 Pa, single-crystal graphene with a diameter of 450 $\mathsf{\mu }\mathrm{m}$ was prepared.