Friday 4 June 2010

JoP: Condensed Matter - Highlights 2009

SEM micrograph of a strongly crumpled graphene sheet on a Si wafer - Condensed Matter Physics Group, The University of Manchester

The Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter published here a list of 35 papers published on it in 2009 that were chosen "on the basis of a range of criteria including referee endorsements, citations and download levels, and simple broad appeal". These papers will be free to read until 31-Dec-2010. 

An interesting thing to do is to compare the subject of the selected works. Graphene is the theme of 8 articles, about 23% of the total. Then comes superconductivity with 4 articles, with about 11%, multiferroics with 3, about  9%, and then comes all other subjects with 2 or 1 articles.

The above list gives supporting evidence to the statement that graphene has been the biggest star in the latest year(s). There are many reasons and probably funding is one of them. We can argue that graphene has not only many interesting properties but also great potential for technological applications, which can be said also about superconductors but their time of impact seems to be gone at least by now. 

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