Electric Field Effect in Atomically Thin Carbon Films
This paper demonstrated that atomically thin, monocrystalline graphitic films—down to a single atomic layer (graphene)—can be isolated, are stable under ambient conditions, and are of high crystalline and electronic quality. The authors showed that these films behave as a two-dimensional semimetal with a small overlap between valence and conduction bands and exhibit a strong ambipolar electric field effect, with charge-carrier concentrations up to 10¹³ cm⁻² and room-temperature mobilities of about 10,000 cm²/V·s tunable by a gate voltage. The work launched the experimental field of two-dimensional materials and underpinned the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics awarded to Geim and Novoselov.