Fifteen years after its discovery, graphene is a serious business. The 9th edition of the Graphene Conference Series, Graphene 2019, took place in the last week of June in Rome, Italy, bringing together 700 participants and 40 exhibitors. The parallel workshop sessions — on growth, chemistry, theory and simulation, applications in optoelectronics and photonics, energy, biosensors and medical, wearable and flexible devices — reflect the breadth of current research activities revolving around graphene, related 2D materials and van der Waals heterostructures. A 2-day industrial forum featured several companies commercializing graphene.

Credit: Iulia Georgescu/Springer Nature Limited

Although the meeting had a strong focus on applications, the full-room session on fundamental theory confirmed that there is still a lot of work to do to understand the underlying mechanisms governing the physics of 2D materials. Exciting current directions are linked to the concepts of excitons and hybrid quasiparticles, valleytronics, and twistronics. Valleytronics refers to the use of the valley degree of freedom intrinsic to 2D semiconductors, resulting from their electronic band structure, and is expected to enable new optoelectronic devices. Twistronics involves the rotational degree of freedom (the twist between two layers with respect to each other) in stacks of atomically thin layers held together by weak van der Waals interactions, and could unveil exotic physics and new device functionalities.

For applications, the current challenges are associated with the large-scale synthesis of quality 2D materials that can be consistently and reliably used in devices. The industrial forum showcased the most recent advances in graphene standardization and commercialization, and outlined a vision for graphene investment opportunities. The major 2D materials companies are concerned about the mixed success in translating academic research to industrial partners. In spite of steady progress in commercializing 2D materials, other obstacles remain, including incomplete standards and safety assessments. Furthermore, a significant reduction of the production costs combined with an increase in automated manufacturing with quality-check protocols are key to the industrial adoption of 2D materials.