Mixed solvents exfoliate graphene analogues

Published in Chemistry World, 4 Oct 2011

Chemists in China have used a mixture of solvents to exfoliate inorganic graphene analogues – two-dimensional nanostructures – from their parent material. The advance could to manufacture inorganic graphene analogues for novel electronic devices.

Inorganic graphene analogues (IGAs) were first discovered by physicists Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov of the University of Manchester, UK, in 2005, a year after the same pair discovered graphene. Like graphene, IGAs are single sheets of atoms, bonded in a ‘chicken-wire’ hexagonal structure, with high mechanical strength and flexibility. But although IGAs are less stable at higher temperatures compared with graphene, they do have some particular advantages: for instance, they can act like doped semiconductors without actually adding any dopants. […]

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