Scientists slice graphite into atom-thick sheets | The Register

Scientists slice graphite into atom-thick sheets | The Register: "An international team of scientists has made a new material just one atom thick, by extracting a single plane of carbon from a graphite crystal. Known as graphene, the new fabric effectively exists in just two dimensions, and could pave the way for computers built from single molecules.

In the latest edition of Science, published tomorrow, the scientists from Manchester University and Chernogolovka, Russia, explain that the atomic sheet is a fullerene molecule. Fullerenes are a class of carbon molecules discovered in the last twenty years. The first, the famous football-shaped Carbon-60 molecule, was named for architect Buckminster Fuller, because of its resemblance to his geodesic dome structures."