Electric Field Effect in Atomically Thin Carbon Films¶
Why this mattered¶
Before this paper, truly two-dimensional crystals were widely treated as physically suspect outside special supporting environments, and graphite was studied mainly as a bulk or multilayer material. Novoselov, Geim, and coauthors showed that atomically thin carbon films could be isolated, contacted, gated, and measured under ambient conditions while retaining high electronic quality. The key shift was not only the observation of thin graphitic flakes, but the demonstration that they behaved as a controllable two-dimensional electronic system: a semimetal with ambipolar field effect, gate-tunable electrons and holes, and room-temperature mobilities near (10{,}000\ \mathrm{cm^2/Vs}).
That made graphene experimentally available as a platform rather than a theoretical idealization. After this work, researchers could use ordinary device geometries to tune carrier density through an electric field, cross between electron and hole conduction, and study transport in a single atomic layer. This opened the route to the rapid discovery of graphene’s unusual quantum Hall effect, Dirac-like quasiparticle physics, high-strength mechanical behavior, thermal transport, and a broader class of van der Waals materials that could be exfoliated, stacked, and engineered layer by layer.
Its importance therefore lies in converting a material long implicit in graphite physics into a new experimental paradigm: stable, gateable, atomically thin matter. The paper helped launch the modern field of two-dimensional materials, where thickness itself became a design variable. Subsequent breakthroughs in graphene and related monolayers, including the recognition honored by the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics, depended on the practical fact established here: a one-atom-thick crystal could be made, handled, and used as a high-quality electronic material.
Abstract¶
We describe monocrystalline graphitic films, which are a few atoms thick but are nonetheless stable under ambient conditions, metallic, and of remarkably high quality. The films are found to be a two-dimensional semimetal with a tiny overlap between valence and conductance bands, and they exhibit a strong ambipolar electric field effect such that electrons and holes in concentrations up to 10(13) per square centimeter and with room-temperature mobilities of approximately 10,000 square centimeters per volt-second can be induced by applying gate voltage.
Related¶
- enables → Black phosphorus field-effect transistors — Graphene field-effect devices demonstrated atomically thin materials as transistor channels, enabling analogous black phosphorus field-effect transistors.
- enables → Layer-dependent ferromagnetism in a van der Waals crystal down to the monolayer limit — Graphene field-effect isolation established mechanical exfoliation and electronic probing of atomically thin crystals used in monolayer van der Waals magnetism.
- enables → Two‐Dimensional Nanocrystals Produced by Exfoliation of Ti3AlC2 — Graphene's isolation by mechanical exfoliation established the atomically thin 2D-material paradigm that motivated exfoliated MXene nanocrystals.
- enables → Single-layer MoS2 transistors — Graphene field-effect devices enabled single-layer MoS2 transistors by proving that atomically thin crystals could function as gated electronic channels.
- cite ← Black phosphorus field-effect transistors — Black phosphorus FETs cite graphene's electric-field effect as the foundational demonstration of gate-tunable transport in atomically thin materials.
- cite ← Layer-dependent ferromagnetism in a van der Waals crystal down to the monolayer limit — Layer-dependent ferromagnetism cites graphene's electric-field-effect work as the landmark starting point for experimentally isolated two-dimensional crystals.
- cite ← Two‐Dimensional Nanocrystals Produced by Exfoliation of Ti3AlC2 — The MXene paper frames Ti3C2 exfoliation in the lineage of atomically thin materials opened by graphene's electric-field-effect demonstration.
- cite ← Two-dimensional gas of massless Dirac fermions in graphene — The graphene Dirac-fermion paper follows the electric-field-effect isolation of atomically thin graphene and studies its unusual charge-carrier physics.
- cite ← Experimental observation of the quantum Hall effect and Berry's phase in graphene — The graphene quantum Hall paper builds on isolated atomically thin carbon films as the experimental platform for measuring graphene's Berry phase.
- cite ← Single-layer MoS2 transistors — The MoS2 transistor work adapts the field-effect transistor paradigm established for atomically thin graphene films to a semiconducting 2D material.
- cite ← Two-dimensional atomic crystals — The 2005 atomic-crystals paper builds on the 2004 atomically thin carbon films work that first demonstrated graphene's electric-field effect in exfoliated carbon layers.
- cite ← Raman Spectrum of Graphene and Graphene Layers — Ferrari et al. use the atomically thin carbon films work as the source of isolated graphene samples whose Raman signatures they characterize.