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Nature Chemistry 1, 175–176 (1 June 2009) | doi:10.1038/nchem.224

Surface assembly: Graphene goes undercover

E. Charles H. Sykes

In everyday life, one meets carbon in its three most common forms: the graphite in your pencil, amorphous carbon on your barbeque and maybe a diamond on your finger. This was also the status quo in the lab until 1985, when the discovery of C60 or 'buckyballs' initiated the search for new forms of carbon that led to the discovery of a host of carbon nanotube varieties.