石墨烯的发现与发展历程

RANDOM WALK TO GRAPHENE

Nobel Lecture, December 8, 2010

by

ANDRE K. GEIM

School of Phys i cs and Astronomy, The Un i vers i ty of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL, Un i ted K i ngdom.

If one wants to understand the beaut i ful phys i cs of graphene, they w i ll be spo i led for cho i ce w i th so many rev i ews and popular sc i ence art i cles now ava i lable. I hope that the reader w i ll excuse me i f on th i s occas i on I recommend my own wr i t i ngs [1–3]. Instead of repeat i ng myself here, I have chosen to descr i be my tw i sty sc i ent ific road that eventually led to the Nobel Pr i ze. Most parts of th i s story are not descr i bed anywhere else, and i ts t i me-l i ne covers the per i od from my PhD i n 1987 to the moment when our 2004 paper, recogn i sed by the Nobel Comm i ttee, was accepted for publ i cat i on. The story naturally gets denser i n events and explanat i ons towards the end. Also, i t prov i des a deta i led rev i ew of pre-2004 l i terature and, w i th the benefit of h i nds i ght, attempts to analyse why graphene has attracted so much i nter-est. I have tr i ed my best to make th i s art i cle not only i nformat i ve but also easy to read, even for non-phys i c i sts.

ZOMBIE MANAGEMENT

My PhD thes i s was called “Invest i gat i on of mechan i sms of transport relaxa-t i on i n metals by a hel i con resonance method”. All I can say i s that the stuff was as i nterest i ng at that t i me as i t sounds to the reader today. I publ i shed five journal papers and fin i shed the thes i s i n five years, the offic i al durat i on for a PhD at my i nst i tut i on, the Inst i tute of Sol i d State Phys i cs.Web of Sc i ence so-berly reveals that the papers were c i ted tw i ce, by co-authors only. The subject was dead a decade before I even started my PhD. However, every cloud has i ts s i lver l i n i ng, and what I un i quely learned from that exper i ence was that I should never torture research students by offer i ng them “zomb i e” projects. After my PhD, I worked as a staff sc i ent i st at the Inst i tute of M i cro-electron i cs Technology, Chernogolovka, wh i ch belongs to the Russ i an Academy of Sc i ences. The Sov i et system allowed and even encouraged jun i or staff to choose the i r own l i ne of research. After a year of pok i ng i n d i fferent d i rect i ons, I separated research-w i se from my former PhD superv i sor, V i ctor Petrashov, and started develop i ng my own n i che. It was an exper i mental system that was both new and doable, wh i ch was nearly an oxymoron, tak i ng i nto account the scarce resources ava i lable at the t i me at Sov i et research