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PROGRESS ARTICLE
The rise of graphene
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 brie y 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.
A. K. GEIM AND K. S. NOVOSELOV
Manchester Centre for Mesoscience and Nanotechnology, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, UK
*e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]
Graphene is the name given to a fl at monolayer of carbon atoms tightly packed into a two-dimensional (2D) honeycomb lattice, and is a basic building block for graphitic materials of all other dimensionalities (Fig. 1). It can be wrapped up into 0D fullerenes, rolled into 1D nanotubes or stacked into 3D graphite. Th eoretically, graphene (or 2D graphite) has been studied for sixty years13, and
is widely used for describing properties of various carbon-based materials. Forty years later, it was realized that graphene also provides an excellent condensed-matter analogue of (2+1)-dimensional quantum electrodynamics46, which propelled graphene into a thriving theoretical toy model. On the other hand, although known as an integral part of 3D materials, graphene was presumed not to exist in the free state, being described as an academic material5
and was believed to be unstable with respect to the formation of curved structures such as soot, fullerenes and nanotubes. Suddenly, the vintage model turned into reality, when free-standing graphene was unexpectedly found three years ago7,8 and especially when the follow-up experiments9,10 confi rmed that its charge carriers were indeed massless Dirac...