Newly developed 2-D crystals are capable of delivering designer materials with revolutionary new properties. By protecting the new reactive crystals with more stable 2D materials, such as graphene, via computer control in a specially designed inert gas chamber environments, these materials can be successfully isolated to a single atomic layer for the first time.

Researchers have combined two unlikely materials to make a digital switch that could improve high speed computing.

Graphene has been called the miracle material but the single-atomic layer material is still seeking its place in the materials world. Now a method to make ‘defective’ graphene could provide the answer. Scientists now report that they have developed a simple electrochemical approach which allows defects to intentionally be created in the graphene, altering its electrical and mechanical properties and making the material even more useful.

Millimetre-sized crystals of high-quality graphene can be made in minutes instead of hours using a new scalable technique, researchers have demonstrated.

Flexing graphene may be the most basic way to control its electrical properties, according to calculations by theoretical physicists.

Scientists have combined two materials with advantageous electronic properties — graphene and molybdenite — into a flash memory prototype that is very promising in terms of performance, size, flexibility and energy consumption.

This image shows a sample morphology probed by Raman spectroscopy.Credit: C. Neumann, S. Reichardt, P. Venezuela, M. Drögeler, L. Banszerus, M. Schmitz, K. Watanabe, T. Taniguchi, F. Mauri, B. Beschoten, S. V. Rotkin and C. Stampfer
This week, an international group of scientists is reporting a breakthrough in the effort to …

In cooperation with the Center for Nano-Optics of Georgia State University in Atlanta (USA), scientists of the Laboratory for Attosecond Physics of the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics and the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität have made simulations of the processes that happen when a layer of carbon atoms is irradiated with strong …

Schematic image, showing the PCBM nanoribbons, comprising four PCBM molecules organized side by side. The grey balls represent the fullerene molecules (each consist of 60 carbon atoms), and the attached side arms are characteristic for PCBM molecules. The white “speed tracks” represent the ability for the nanoribbons to form electronic …

Graphene/WSe2 (2-D material)/graphene heterostructure. Credit: ICFO-Fabien Vialla
Ultra-fast detection of light lies at the heart of optical communication systems nowadays. Driven by the internet of things and 5G, data communication bandwidth is growing exponentially, thus requiring even faster optical detectors that can be integrated into photonic circuits.

In the recent work published …