Graphite the next big thing towards advanced electronics?

Resembling chicken wire on a nano scale, graphene – single sheets of graphite – is only one atom thick, making it the world’s thinnest material. Two million graphene sheets stacked up would not be as thick as a credit card. The tricky part physicists have yet to figure out how to control the flow of electrons through the very different than silicon, the material currently used in semiconductors. Last year, a research team led by University of Arizona physicists cleared the first hurdle by identifying boron nitride, a structurally identical but non-conducting material, as a suitable mounting surface for single-atom sheets of graphene. The team also showed that in addition to providing mechanical support, boron nitride improves the electronic properties of graphene by smoothening out fluctuations in the electronic charges. Now the team found that boron nitride also influences how the electrons travel through the graphene. The results of the study open up new ways of controlling the electron flow through graphene. The study has been published in Nature Physics read more