Physics Professor Organizes International Graphene Workshop

Photo by Russell Cothren

Salvador Barraza-Lopez

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – As a result of the reception of his work with graphene, Salvador Barraza-Lopez, assistant professor of physics in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, brought together a group of more than 40 researchers last summer for an international workshop on graphene’s strain engineering. His co-organizers included Maria A. H. Vozmediano (Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Madrid, Spain) and Mikhail I. Katsnelson (Radboud University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands). Katsnelson, the leading theoretician on graphene, was a co-author on publications for which the discoverers of graphene, Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, received the Nobel Prize in 2010.

Graphene is a one-atom-thick sheet of graphite. Electrons moving through graphite have mass and encounter resistance, while electrons moving through graphene are massless, and therefore travel much more freely. This makes graphene an excellent candidate material for use in meeting future energy needs and the fabrication of quantum computers, which make enormous calculations with little energy use.

 “Being isolated less than ten years ago, two-dimensional materials are enticing because they are the thinnest membranes to ever be made,” said Barraza-Lopez, “As it turns out, the material properties of these membranes—electrical, optical, chemical, mechanical—can be modified by the shape they take when stretched or bent.”

In addition to organizing the workshop, Barraza-Lopez shared the latest developments taking place at the University of Arkansas and heard of news firsthand from experimental and theoretical teams in this area. Barraza-Lopez's work with graphene has ranged from developing a new mathematical framework to characterize its shape to finding a new approach for controlling the strain on graphene membranes.

Salvador Barraza-Lopez and researchers at the international workshop on graphene’s strain engineering.

Researchers from Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Colombia, France, Germany, Iran, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, The United Kingdom and the United States of America were represented at the workshop, which took place at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule in Zurich, Switzerland, July 14-16.

The event was possible through financial assistance from the Department of Physics at the University of Arkansas,the Spanish Ministry for Economic Development, and the Centre Européen de Calcul Atomique et Moléculaire (CECAM); an organization devoted to the promotion of fundamental research on advanced computational methods and to their application to important problems in frontier areas of science and technology.