Berlin 2008 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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HL: Fachverband Halbleiterphysik

HL 0: Tutorial: Graphene

HL 0.1: Tutorium

Sonntag, 24. Februar 2008, 14:00–15:00, ER 270

Wandering through the hills of flat carbon: The electronic properties of graphene — •Uli Zeitler — High Field Magnet Laboratory, Institute for Molecules and Materials, Radboud University Nijmegen, NL-6525 ED Nijmegen

Recently a new member joined the family of two-dimensional electron systems, graphene, a single layer of carbon arranged in a wrinkled honeycomb lattice. This 2D form of carbon was long believed to be thermodynamically instable and it took until 2004 to be discovered by Andre Geim’s group in Manchester.

Electrons in single graphene behave as massless chiral Dirac fermions, bilayer graphene mimics the properties of relativistic massive chiral particles. These unique electronic properties lead to a plethora of new physics and possible applications. In particular, they enable us to study quantum electrodynamics, a research field hitherto reserved to high-energy physics, in a rather simple solid state system.

In this tutorial I will give an overview on the fascinating electronic and structural properties of graphene. I will show how graphene devices are produced using mechanical exfoliation of graphite. I will relate the bandstructure of single-layer and bilayer graphene to its electronic properties and I will present high-field quantum Hall experiments mimicking quantum electrodynamics. In particular I will show how graphene’s unique electronic and structural properties enable the quantum Hall effect (actually a typical low-temperature phenomenon) to surprisingly become observable at room-temperature.