Volume 9 Issue 10, October 2014

The large-scale production of graphene aimed at industrial applications has grown significantly in the past few years, especially since many companies in China have entered the market.

As technical knowledge, manufacturing methods and the development of applications mature, key factors will affect the pace of commercialization of graphene.

Chris Toumey considers the reflections on nanoscience of the chemist James Gimzewski.

Jong-Hyun Ahn and Byung Hee Hong discuss how graphene can be used in the development of flexible electronics.

Felice Torrisi and Jonathan N. Coleman describe how graphene can be used in conductive inks to print electronic circuits.

Energy storage is a grand challenge for future energy infrastructure, transportation and consumer electronics. Jun Liu discusses how graphene may — or may not — be used to improve various electrochemical energy storage devices.

Siva Böhm discusses how graphene can be used to prevent corrosion of metals such as steel.

Solid-state nanopores are often used for biomolecular analysis, but have so far been unable to sequence DNA. Marija Drndić asks whether nanopores made in graphene could fulfil all of the requirements needed for sequencing.

Kostas Kostarelos and Kostya S. Novoselov examine the potential of graphene in biomedical applications.

Emilie J. Siochi explains how most of the properties of graphene could be of use in aerospace applications.

Survey data suggests that nanoscientists are relatively frequent public communicators and in general have a positive outlook when it comes to engaging with journalists and lay audiences.

A built-in semiconductor/nanomagnet interface acts as a spin filter in a conventional laser to produce circularly polarized emission without the need for external spin-polarized pumping.

The asymmetry of light–matter coupling in momentum space of transition metal dichalcogenides drives valley photocurrents in WSe₂-based devices.

This Review discusses the recent experimental and theoretical findings on polycrystalline graphene and related materials.

The potential and challenges for electronic applications of graphene and other 2D materials are explored in this Review.

This article reviews recent advances in the application of 2D materials for the detection of light in various frequency ranges.

Spin-dependent phenomena and applications in graphene and other 2D materials are discussed in this Review.

Crystallographic alignment of the two graphene layers in a van der Waals heterostructure leads to resonant tunnelling with the conservation of both energy and momentum.

Hot-electron effects in graphene can be used to detect terahertz radiation at room temperature with high sensitivity, low noise-equivalent power and a fast response time.

The coupling of graphene resonators with superconducting cavities with quality factors exceeding 220,000 represents an important step towards the realization of efficient devices for force and mass sensing, and for studying the quantum regime of mechanical motion.

Folding MoS₂ monolayers to obtain bilayers with different stacking orders results in enhanced valley- and spin-polarizations compared with natural Bernal-stacked bilayers.

A large negative differential resistance is detected in a single-molecule break junction and theoretical models validate intrinsic resonant transport inside the molecule.

Electron tunnelling currents between nanogap electrodes can be used to partially sequence peptides, and discriminate a peptide from its phosphorylated variant.

Survey results suggest that nanoscientists are relatively frequent public communicators who commonly associate their communication efforts with positive impacts on their professional success.

Fe₃O₄ nanoparticles deposited on top of GaN nanorods produce a spin-up and spin-down imbalance that makes the semiconductor emit coherent spin-polarized light.

A spin- and valley-polarized photocurrent is generated, in an electric double-layer transistor, with a direction and magnitude that depends on the degree of circular polarization of the incident radiation and on an external electric field.

Strong underwater adhesive fibres are self-assembled by fusing mussel foot proteins with an amyloid-based protein.

Nanoscience is not simple for non-specialists. Aravind Vijayaraghavan explains how graphene can help.

As a result of significant scientific and technological progress over the past ten years, the commercialization of products based on graphene and related two-dimensional materials is within reach in a range of areas, from consumer electronics to energy storage. This focus reviews the fundamental properties of graphene that are relevant to electronic and other applications, and discusses the opportunities and challenges of commercializing graphene technologies.