Abstract:
The past twenty-five years have seen the discovery of three new carbon allotropes: fullerene, carbon nanotubes and graphene. Graphene, with an ideal two-dimensional structure, demonstrates many unique physical and chemical properties. This short review presents different “faces” of graphene in the eyes of physicists and chemists. For physicists, graphene means the thinnest platform to reveal new or unexpected properties of materials, while, for chemists, graphene acts as a basic and starting unit for desired structures with tuned properties. Thermal chemical exfoliation under mild and well-controllable conditions is highlighted as a feasible solution for the realization of mass-production and early applications of graphene-based materials.