Silicene: It could be the new graphene

The hottest celebrity in the world of nanomaterials may soon face a new rival. Inspired by the Nobel Prize-winning creation of the carbon material known as graphene, physicists have now created atom-thin sheets of carbon’s big brother, silicon.

Silicon shares many properties with carbon, which sits just above silicon on the periodic table. In 2007 Lok Lew Yan Voon and then-graduate student Gian Guzm&aacut