February 26, 2007
Graphene is a rapidly rising star on the horizon of materials science and condensed matter physics. This strictly two-dimensional material exhibits exceptionally high crystal and electronic quality and, despite its short history, has already revealed a cornucopia of new physics and potential applications, which are briefly discussed here. Whereas one can be certain of the realness of applications only when commercial products appear, graphene no longer requires any further proof of its importance in terms of fundamental physics. Owing to its unusual electronic spectrum, graphene has led to the emergence of a new paradigm of 'relativistic' condensed matter physics, where quantum relativistic phenomena, some of which are unobservable in high energy physics, can now be mimicked and tested in table-top experiments. More generally, graphene represents a conceptually new class of materials that are only one atom thick and, on this basis, offers new inroads into low-dimensional physics that has never ceased to surprise and continues to provide a fertile ground for applications.
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Graphene is a wonder material with many superlatives to its name. It is the thinnest material in the universe and the strongest ever measured. Its charge carriers exhibit giant intrinsic mobility, have the smallest effective mass (it is zero) and can travel micrometer-long distances without scattering at room temperature. Graphene can sustain current densities 6 orders higher than copper, shows record thermal conductivity and stiffness, is impermeable to gases and reconciles ...
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Graphene, a single atomic layer of graphite, first isolated in 2004, has made a quantum leap in the exploration of the physics of two-dimensional electron systems. Since the initial report of its discovery, many thousands of papers have been published, attempting to explain every aspect of the exotic electronic properties of this system. The graphene euphoria has culminated with the 2010 Nobel Prize in physics being awarded jointly to Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov of th...
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Discoveries of graphene and graphane possessing unique electronic and magnetic properties offer a bright future for carbon based electronics, with future prospects of superseding silicon in the semiconductor industry.
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Single layers of carbon dubbed "graphenes", from which graphite is built, have attracted broad interest in the scientific community because of recent exciting experimental results. Graphene is interesting from a fundamental research perspective, as well as for potential technological applications. Here, we provide a brief overview of recent developments in this field, focusing especially on the electronic properties of graphite. Experimental evidence indicates that high-quali...
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Graphene has a multitude of striking properties that make it an exceedingly attractive material for various applications, many of which will emerge over the next decade. However, one of the most promising applications lie in exploiting its peculiar electronic properties which are governed by its electrons obeying a linear dispersion relation. This leads to the observation of half integer quantum hall effect and the absence of localization. The latter is attractive for graphen...
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This review examines the properties of graphene from an experimental perspective. The intent is to review the most important experimental results at a level of detail appropriate for new graduate students who are interested in a general overview of the fascinating properties of graphene. While some introductory theoretical concepts are provided, including a discussion of the electronic band structure and phonon dispersion, the main emphasis is on describing relevant experimen...
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Graphene research is currently one of the largest fields in condensed matter. Due to its unusual electronic spectrum with Dirac-like quasiparticles, and the fact that it is a unique example of a metallic membrane, graphene has properties that have no match in standard solid state textbooks. In these lecture notes, I discuss some of these properties that are not covered in detail in recent reviews. We study the particular aspects of the physics/chemistry of carbon that influen...
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In this document we explore graphene, a two-dimensional material with remarkable properties. We center our discussion around its electronic characteristics and their applications. We begin by giving a simple electronic model which will then allow us to discuss its conductivity, electronic mobility and the peculiar situation we find at the Fermi level. We then move to the limitations imposed by the electronic structure, notably, the absence of a gap in the band. Finally, we ta...