Abstract

Graphene is a single layer of graphite and it shows unique properties: it is the thinnest and strongest material known. It has giant charge carriers’ mobility. It is the only elastic and conductive membrane known and it is impermeable to gases. This makes graphene a potential material for nano-electronics, for nano-mechanical systems, thin-film transistors, transparent and conductive composites, and photonics. However, the identification and counting of graphene layers is still a major hurdle as monolayers are a great minority amongst accompanying thicker flakes. In this talk I will show that Rayleigh imaging and Raman spectroscopy are fast, sensitive and non-destructive techniques able to identify graphene. In particular, I will show that Raman Spectroscopy is able to probe several properties of graphene, such as amount of disorder and doping, edges and charged impurities.