2D Materials Science: Graphene and Beyond

Pulickel M. Ajayan, Rice University delivered this keynote address at the 2014 MRS Fall Meeting.

Dr. Ajayan's abstract: The advent of graphene had a strong impact in the field of materials science and a large number of researchers, working in diverse areas of materials science and nanotechnology, have been engaged in the excitement provided by this unique material. Even more, recent years have seen the spectacular growth of this effort, including a large number of material compositions that adapt the two-dimensional layered structure, exemplified by graphene. This talk will explore the current scenario of two-dimensional materials science and the efforts to synthesize, characterize, manipulate and engineer monoatomic layers into functional architectures. The ability to isolate and rebuild atomic layers with different electronic structure could lead to new, artificially hybridized and stacked van der Waals solids. The design of such novel 2D structures could impact several applications ranging from electronics to catalysis.