Lay some graphene down on a wavy surface, and you'll get a guide to one possible future of two-dimensional electronics.
Rice University scientists put forth the idea that growing atom-thick graphene on a gently textured surface creates peaks and valleys in the sheets that turn them into "pseudo-electromagnetic" devices.
The channels create their own minute but detectable magnetic fields. According to a study by materials theorist Boris Yakobson, alumnus Henry Yu and research scientist Alex Kutana at Rice's George R. Brown School of Engineering, these could facilitate nanoscale optical devices like converging lenses or collimators.
Their study appears in the American Chemical Society's Nano Letters.
They also promise a way to achieve a Hall effect -- a voltage difference across the strongly conducting graphene -- that could facilitate valleytronics applications that manipulate how electrons are trapped in "valleys" in an electronic band structure.
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