The 2021 Fernand Holweck Award lecture

The Fernand Holweck Medal and Prize is a major European prize for Physics awarded jointly every year by the Institute of Physics (IOP) and the Société Française de Physique (SFP). Prof Guy Le Lay was awarded the prestigious award in 2021 to celebrate his achievements and research.  

Date: 16 November 2021
Time: 17.00-18.00 (GMT) / 18.00-19.00 (CET) --> 18.00 for Paris         
Title: The Fernand Holweck lecture: The rise of Silicene, graphene-type silicon by Guy Le Lay

By a curious twist in time, graphene, the mother of all atom-thin pure carbon materials obtained by peeling graphite to the ultimate thickness, was born in 2004 after the births of her two children, the C60 fullerene (a sheet of graphene wrapped up as a soccer ball) in 1985 and the CNTs* (rolled up sheets of graphene) in1991. After the discoveries in nature of these low-dimensional carbon forms, a breakthrough has been the  first realization in 2012 of silicene, a two-dimensional (2D) artificial allotrope of silicon similar to graphene, celebrated as Silicon’s Next Wave because of its tantalizing topological properties. Soon after, the legacy of silicene has been the advent of all Xenes**, from borophene to tellurene, especially, germanene, stanene and plumbene, created from group 14 elements (Ge, Sn, and Pb).

In this presentation Guy Le Lay will describe the genesis of these novel nanomaterials, their outstanding emerging properties, and their fascinating potential applications in nanoelectronics, spintronics, quantum computing, nanobiology and nanomedicine.

Attendance at this lecture is free, but pre-registration is required. The event is open to IOP members and non-members.

Registration

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