A new material imitates the exotic properties of the grafeno

A team with participation of the researcher of the Upper Council of Scientific Investigations (CSIC) Francisco Guinea has achieved to manufacture a material that imitates the exotic properties of the grafeno. The work, that appears published in the last number of the magazine Nature, opens the road for sintetizar on a large scale material with properties cualitativamente similar to the grafeno and have of new devices to measure.

The grafeno, to horse between a metal and a semiconductor, is two-dimensional and characterises for having an alone layer of atoms of placed carbon in a hexagonal network; it is transparent, waterproof, hard and elastic and has some deformations that give place to magnetic fields very high. When the Nobel prizes of Physics 2010 Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, of the University of Manchester, achieved to isolate this material eight years ago, opened also the doors to the knowledge of these only properties.

“The electrons of the grafeno comport like elementary particles of mass zero, that is to say, move to near speeds to the one of the light. Besides, the deformations of the crystalline network produce similar effects to the ones of a magnetic field, but a lot of elder that those that can obtain in a laboratory in the Earth”, stands out Guinea, researcher in the Institute of Sciences of Materials of Madrid (CSIC) and National Prize of Investigation 2011 in Physical Sciences.

These peculiarities have reproduced now placing molecules of oxide of carbon (CO) “in suitable positions” on a surface of copper. Serving of a microscope of electronic scanning, the scientists attained “to push” these molecules. The propagation of the electrons along the surface of copper saw modified by the molecules, what gave as resulted properties cualitativamente similar to the ones of the grafeno.