Enabling Research

Work Package 1

Our principal goal is to explore new avenues in fundamental research on graphene and layered materials. Our research allows us to conceptualise new ideas for the uses of these materials, and to find new ways of translating fundamental knowledge to applications in European industry.

We also explore the potential of graphene and layered materials to enable new functionalities in electronics, photonics and other technologies, collaborating with other Work Packages in the Graphene Flagship to investigate new materials and improve the devices and technologies developed at our partner institutions.

Fundamental Research

We conduct our research at the most fundamental level to build up our scientific knowledge and expand the applications of graphene and layered materials. Our findings help other Work Packages to further advance their research and have even enabled us to create new start-up companies: Graphene Lighting, Graphene Security and Eksagon, an Associate Member of the Graphene Flagship.

We primarily focus on the following aspects of fundamental research:

• Characterising the structural, optical, electronic and thermal transport properties, modelling the interactions and searching for new applications of graphene, hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) and transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs).
• Developing and characterising new ‘sandwiched’ heterostructures of layered materials and performing exploratory studies into new layered crystals and heterostructures.
• Investigating the effects of intercalating metals, ionic liquids, and electrolytes in graphene and other layered materials to control material properties and create new functionalities.
• Designing new electronic and optoelectronic devices based on encapsulated heterostructures based on ultra-high-quality graphene, TMDs and other layered materials