Biomedical subjects

A K Geim

Publications and source records attributed to A K Geim.

7 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2005

Nanofabricated media with negative permeability at visible frequencies.

A great deal of attention has recently been focused on a new class of smart materials--so-called left-handed media--that exhibit highly unusual electromagnetic properties and promise new device applications. Left-handed materials require negative permeability micro, an extreme condition that has so far been achieved only for frequencies in the microwave to terahertz range. Extension of the approach described in ref. 7 to achieve the necessary high-frequency magnetic response in visible optics presents a formidable challenge, as no material--natural or artificial--is known to exhibit any magnetism at these frequencies. Here we report a nanofabricated medium consisting of electromagnetically coupled pairs of gold dots with geometry carefully designed at a 10-nm level. The medium exhibits a strong magnetic response at visible-light frequencies, including a band with negative micro. The magnetism arises owing to the excitation of an antisymmetric plasmon resonance. The high-frequency permeability qualitatively reveals itself via optical impedance matching. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of engineering magnetism at visible frequencies and pave the way towards magnetic and left-handed components for visible optics.

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PubMed2005

Two-dimensional gas of massless Dirac fermions in graphene.

Quantum electrodynamics (resulting from the merger of quantum mechanics and relativity theory) has provided a clear understanding of phenomena ranging from particle physics to cosmology and from astrophysics to quantum chemistry. The ideas underlying quantum electrodynamics also influence the theory of condensed matter, but quantum relativistic effects are usually minute in the known experimental systems that can be described accurately by the non-relativistic Schrödinger equation. Here we report an experimental study of a condensed-matter system (graphene, a single atomic layer of carbon) in which electron transport is essentially governed by Dirac's (relativistic) equation. The charge carriers in graphene mimic relativistic particles with zero rest mass and have an effective 'speed of light' c* approximately 10(6) m s(-1). Our study reveals a variety of unusual phenomena that are characteristic of two-dimensional Dirac fermions. In particular we have observed the following: first, graphene's conductivity never falls below a minimum value corresponding to the quantum unit of conductance, even when concentrations of charge carriers tend to zero; second, the integer quantum Hall effect in graphene is anomalous in that it occurs at half-integer filling factors; and third, the cyclotron mass m(c) of massless carriers in graphene is described by E = m(c)c*2. This two-dimensional system is not only interesting in itself but also allows access to the subtle and rich physics of quantum electrodynamics in a bench-top experiment.

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PubMed2005

Two-dimensional atomic crystals.

We report free-standing atomic crystals that are strictly 2D and can be viewed as individual atomic planes pulled out of bulk crystals or as unrolled single-wall nanotubes. By using micromechanical cleavage, we have prepared and studied a variety of 2D crystals including single layers of boron nitride, graphite, several dichalcogenides, and complex oxides. These atomically thin sheets (essentially gigantic 2D molecules unprotected from the immediate environment) are stable under ambient conditions, exhibit high crystal quality, and are continuous on a macroscopic scale.

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PubMed2004

Electric field effect in atomically thin carbon films.

We describe monocrystalline graphitic films, which are a few atoms thick but are nonetheless stable under ambient conditions, metallic, and of remarkably high quality. The films are found to be a two-dimensional semimetal with a tiny overlap between valence and conductance bands, and they exhibit a strong ambipolar electric field effect such that electrons and holes in concentrations up to 10(13) per square centimeter and with room-temperature mobilities of approximately 10,000 square centimeters per volt-second can be induced by applying gate voltage.

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PubMed2004

Long-range nonlocal flow of vortices in narrow superconducting channels.

We report a new nonlocal effect in vortex matter, where an electric current confined to a small region of a long and sufficiently narrow superconducting wire causes vortex flow at distances hundreds of intervortex separations away. The observed remote traffic of vortices is attributed to a very efficient transfer of a local strain through the one-dimensional vortex lattice (VL), even in the presence of disorder. We also observe mesoscopic fluctuations in the nonlocal vortex flow, which arise due to "traffic jams" when vortex arrangements do not match a local geometry of a superconducting channel.

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PubMed2003

Subatomic movements of a domain wall in the Peierls potential.

The discrete nature of crystal lattices plays a role in virtually every material property. But it is only when the size of entities hosted by a crystal becomes comparable to the lattice period--as occurs for dislocations, vortices in superconductors and domain walls--that this discreteness is manifest explicitly. The associated phenomena are usually described in terms of a background Peierls 'atomic washboard' energy potential, which was first introduced for the case of dislocation motion in the 1940s. This concept has subsequently been invoked in many situations to describe certain features in the bulk behaviour of materials, but has to date eluded direct detection and experimental scrutiny at a microscopic level. Here we report observations of the motion of a single magnetic domain wall at the scale of the individual peaks and troughs of the atomic energy landscape. Our experiments reveal that domain walls can become trapped between crystalline planes, and that they propagate by distinct jumps that match the lattice periodicity. The jumps between valleys are found to involve unusual dynamics that shed light on the microscopic processes underlying domain-wall propagation. Such observations offer a means for probing experimentally the physics of topological defects in discrete lattices--a field rich in phenomena that have been subject to extensive theoretical study.

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PubMed2003

Microfabricated adhesive mimicking gecko foot-hair.

The amazing climbing ability of geckos has attracted the interest of philosophers and scientists alike for centuries. However, only in the past few years has progress been made in understanding the mechanism behind this ability, which relies on submicrometre keratin hairs covering the soles of geckos. Each hair produces a miniscule force approximately 10(-7) N (due to van der Waals and/or capillary interactions) but millions of hairs acting together create a formidable adhesion of approximately 10 N x cm(-2): sufficient to keep geckos firmly on their feet, even when upside down on a glass ceiling. It is very tempting to create a new type of adhesive by mimicking the gecko mechanism. Here we report on a prototype of such 'gecko tape' made by microfabrication of dense arrays of flexible plastic pillars, the geometry of which is optimized to ensure their collective adhesion. Our approach shows a way to manufacture self-cleaning, re-attachable dry adhesives, although problems related to their durability and mass production are yet to be resolved.

Adhesives↗