Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Condensed-matter physics

Carbon conductor corrupted

Nature volume 458, pages 38–39 (2009)Cite this article

Atomically thin sheets of graphite are metal-like conductors — until they react with hydrogen, when they become insulators. This curious effect could be an excellent model for studying metal–insulator transitions.

In most solids, electrons behave much like particles of matter: they have a mass, and they speed up and slow down in response to forces. But in graphene — the single-atom-thick sheet of carbon that constitutes the basic building block of graphite — electrons move as if they have no mass1,2, and so behave more like photons. In other words, although electrons in graphene can change their momentum and energy, they cannot speed up or slow down. One would therefore intuitively think that electron flow (electrical current) in graphene could never be completely blocked. But reporting in Science, Elias et al.3 show that, when graphene reacts with a small amount of hydrogen, its electrons become stuck and the carbon sheet becomes an insulator.

Your institute does not have access to this article

Access options

Buy article

Get time limited or full article access on ReadCube.

$32.00

Buy

All prices are NET prices.

Figure 1: Metal–insulator transitions.

References

  1. Novoselov, K. S. et al. Nature 438, 197–200 (2005).

    ADS  CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Zhang, Y., Tan, Y.-W., Stormer, H. L. & Kim, P. Nature 438, 201–204 (2005).

    ADS  CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Elias, D. C. et al. Science 323, 610–613 (2009).

    ADS  CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Anderson, P. W. Phys. Rev. 109, 1492–1505 (1957).

    ADS  Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Abrahams, E. et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 42, 673–676 (1979).

    ADS  Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Bardarson, J. H. et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 106801 (2007).

    ADS  CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Chen, J.-H. et al. Nature Phys. 4, 377–381 (2008).

    ADS  CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Adam, S., Hwang, E. H., Galitski, V. M. & Das Sarma, S. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 104, 18392–18397 (2007).

    ADS  CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Sofo, J. O., Chaudhari, A. S. & Barber, G. D. Phys. Rev. B 75, 153401 (2007).

    ADS  Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Aleiner, I. L. & Efetov, K. B. Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 236801 (2006).

    ADS  CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Author notes

  1. Shaffique Adam is at the Condensed Matter Theory Center, Department of Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA. adam1@umd.edu

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Michael S. Fuhrer is at the Center for Nanophysics and Advanced Materials, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA. mfuhrer@umd.edu,

    Michael S. Fuhrer & Shaffique Adam

Authors
  1. Michael S. Fuhrer
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Shaffique Adam
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Fuhrer, M., Adam, S. Carbon conductor corrupted. Nature 458, 38–39 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/458038a

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/458038a

Further reading

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing