Published in Chemistry World, 10 Jun 2009
Since its discovery in 2004, the carbon-based material known as graphene has revealed a stream of attractive properties. Now, researchers in the US have shown that a two-layer version can deliver yet another: a wide, tunable bandgap. The discovery paves the way for new electronic devices, from lasers that change colour to electronic circuits that rearrange themselves.
Graphene is a sheet of carbon just one atom thick, with a structure that resembles chicken wire. Single sheets of the material have proved to have record-breaking strength, high conductivity and high transparency. But recently some scientists have come to suspect that the most interesting properties might arise in two parallel sheets, or so-called bilayer graphene. […]
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