How can graphene be 2 dimensional

It only takes a minute to sign up. Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search. How is graphene a 2D substance? It has length, width and some thickness to it, else it would be invisible. Why is it considered a 2D substance? The dimensionality of a system in practice means the number of dimensions in which objects confined to that system are free to move.

For graphene we are generally talking about the motion of electrons within it though I guess we could be talking about phonons. Anyhow, the thickness of the sheet is around one atom, which means that in the direction normal to the sheet the electrons are confined within a potential well of around 1 atom in width.

Consequently the energy spacings for excitations normal to the layer are going to be around atomic energy levels, which are typically a few eV. That's why the electrons can be treated as moving in a two dimensional system. However I'd guess you'd need several thousand degrees before this became significant. Because its structure displays translational symmetry in 2D. Atoms themselves are 3D as in other materials, but they are placed on a 2D flat plane. Compare to 1D Fullerenes.

It is 2D from the standpoint that it's a great marketing scheme to call it 2D. Call something the most advanced substance on earth, and people will go nuts wanting to buy anything made out of it. From an actual physics standpoint, it's not 2D The smallest-known distance is a Planck length. In order to have a distance smaller than a Planck length, it requires incredible amounts of gravitational force Its uses are wide-ranging and recently it was shown that it could even act as a barrier against mosquito bites see New study shows graphene can prevent mosquito bites.

In this new study, reported in a paper in Physical Review Letters , the researchers asked two fundamental questions: to what extent is graphene graphite, and what is the true thickness of graphene? To their surprise, they found that 2D graphene, which is a single flat layer of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb structure, has many of the same mechanical properties as 3D graphite, which is a naturally occurring form of carbon made up of a very weak stack of many layers of graphene.

They further discovered that graphene has a similar resistance to compression as graphite and that it is significantly thicker than is widely believed. If the thickness of a block of graphite layers thick is measured, the thickness of a single graphene layer should simply be the thickness of the graphene block divided by Therefore, it is reasonable to consider graphene to have a thickness of 0.

In that sense, 2D materials are actually all 3D. Graphene is often called the world's first 2D material. It was discovered in by peeling off graphene flakes from bulk graphite used in pencil leads and lubricants with sticky tape.

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