Graphene nanoelectronics 

Graphene is a single atomic layer of graphite, i.e., a two dimensional hexagonal lattice of carbon atoms.  Whereas the notion of  graphene has been around for a few decades, it has only been in 2005 that a single layer of graphite has been isolated and  deposited on a substracte, making it possible to fabricate an ambipolar  Field Effect Transistor based on graphene [1,2].  Surprisingly, the mobility of electrons in such a device was so high that Quantum Hall effect was observed, even at room temperature. This indicates that the effect of contaminants attached to the graphene is small.

The observation of QHE has triggered a huge amount of work both because possible applications and for fundammental reasons. Among the latter, the electronic structure is interesting by itself: is a zero gap semiconductor (i.e., a semimetal), with linear bands with electron-hole symmetry around the Fermi energy. The   Fermi surface consists of two inequivalent points or valleys with 2 linear bands each. This makes it possible to describe the low energy physics of graphene with 4 by 4 matrices formally identical to a Dirac theory for two dimensional masless fermions.

Our own research on focuses on the properties of graphene-based nanostructures. We study one dimensional stripes of graphene, called graphene ribbons and zero dimensional structures, graphene nanoislands.  

[1] K. S. Novoselov et al., Nature 438, 197 (2005)
[2] Y. Zhang et al., Nature 438, 201 (2005).
[3]K. S. Novoselov et al Science 315, 1379 (2007)