Tag Archives: G. Allan

Artificial graphene?

I’m not sure I ever want to hear the word ‘revolutionary’ or its cousin’ revolution’ in relationship to science and/or technology ever again and I don’t think anyone’s going to be paying attention to this heartfelt plea: please, please, please find another word for a couple of years at least.  That said, artificial graphene does sound exciting as it’s described in a Feb. 17, 2014 news item on Azonano,

A new breed of ultra thin super-material has the potential to cause a technological revolution. “Artificial graphene” should lead to faster, smaller and lighter electronic and optical devices of all kinds, including higher performance photovoltaic cells, lasers or LED lighting.

For the first time, scientists are able to produce and have analysed artificial graphene from traditional semiconductor materials. Such is the scientific importance of this breakthrough these findings were published recently in one of the world’s leading physics journals, Physical Review X. A researcher from the University of Luxembourg played an important role in this highly innovative work.

The University of Luxembourg Feb. 14, 2014 news release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, describes both graphene and artificial graphene

Graphene (derived from graphite) is a one atom thick honeycomb lattice of carbon atoms. This strong, flexible, conducting and transparent material has huge scientific and technological potential. Only discovered in 2004, there is a major global push to understand its potential uses. Artificial graphene has the same honeycomb structure, but in this case, instead of carbon atoms, nanometer-thick semiconductor crystals are used. Changing the size, shape and chemical nature of the nano-crystals, makes it possible to tailor the material to each specific task.

University of Luxembourg researcher Dr. Efterpi Kalesaki from the Physics and Materials Science Research Unit is the first author of the article appearing in the Physical Review X . Dr. Kalesaki said: “these self‐assembled semi-conducting nano-crystals with a honeycomb structure are emerging as a new class of systems with great potential.” Prof Ludger Wirtz, head of the Theoretical Solid-State Physics group at the University of Luxembourg, added: “artificial graphene opens the door to a wide variety of materials with variable nano‐geometry and ‘tunable’ properties.”

I’m going to provide two links and two citations to the paper as its publishing journal is currently beta testing a new website and the paper is available on both,

Dirac Cones, Topological Edge States, and Nontrivial Flat Bands in Two-Dimensional Semiconductors with a Honeycomb Nanogeometry by E. Kalesaki, C. Delerue, C. Morais Smith, W. Beugeling, G. Allan, and D. Vanmaekelbergh. Phys. Rev. X 4, 011010 (2014) [12 pages] DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevX.4.011010

Dirac Cones, Topological Edge States, and Nontrivial Flat Bands in Two-Dimensional Semiconductors with a Honeycomb Nanogeometry by E. Kalesaki, C. Delerue, C. Morais Smith, W. Beugeling, G. Allan, and D. Vanmaekelbergh. Phys. Rev. X 4, 011010 – Published 30 January 2014 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.4.011010

The second link to the paper will take you to the journal’s beta site. I have to give the designers a big thumbs up on the new design. To contextualize my review, I’m not a fan of changing website designs as functionality is too often sacrificed for ‘good looks’. Sadly, I do have a bit more work cutting and pasting with the new version but I’m hugely relieved that I did not have to spend several minutes trying to find the information.

Both versions of the paper are open access.