A leap forward for graphene electronics

2024-01-04 17:07:16

DECRYPTION – Applications are envisaged for electric cars, space or quantum technologies. But there are still problems to be solved.

Coming from graphite (a mineral used for pencil leads), graphene is an astonishing material. This crystal has a pure form of carbon, where the atoms are arranged to form a tiling of hexagons, like honeycombs. He has astonishing qualities. This excellent conductor of electricity is endowed with exceptional mechanical properties, capable of forming remarkable filters, and can also become an insulator or, on the contrary, a superconductor (allowing electric current to pass without resistance) under certain conditions.

But graphene was still missing one string: that of becoming a functional semiconductor, and thus opening up new fields of application for electronics. However, it was this last area that was highlighted in 2010, when the Nobel Prize in physics crowned the discovery of graphene by two researchers of Russian origin from the University of Manchester, at the start of the millennium.