Reading
The books to learn the field from and the journals where it publishes, chosen by hand: what each is good for, where to start, and what you can read without a subscription.
13 books, from a first read to the theory the papers take for granted. With a reader lens set, the ones closest to that reader’s work are marked.
No physics needed.
The Superstrong, Superthin, and Superversatile Material That Will Revolutionize the World
A popular account by a NASA physicist and a materials scientist: how graphene was found, what it can do, why making it in bulk is hard, and what is not yet known about its effects on health. The title is more confident than the field is; read it with the Applications page beside it.
Where to learn it properly.
The theory of graphene’s electrons, by a co-author of the 2005 paper that found them behaving as massless Dirac particles. Written for graduate students and researchers.
From Electronic Structure to Quantum Transport
Builds from tight-binding band structures to quantum transport calculations. The practical companion for anyone who will compute how electrons move through graphene and its relatives.
Properties and Devices
Chapters by leading groups on graphene – its optics, vibrations, heat, electronics, spintronics and plasmonics – and on what came after it: graphene–BN heterostructures, the semiconducting dichalcogenides and black phosphorus. The broadest survey of the field in one volume.
For when a single family or technique becomes your work.
Raman spectroscopy is how most laboratories first check a flake: how many layers, how strained, how defective. This is the book by the researchers who worked out much of how carbon’s Raman spectra are read.
The dichalcogenides from their chemistry and structure to their electronic and optical properties, excitons and heterostructures, written by two authors rather than assembled from chapters.
From Discovery to Applications of Two-Dimensional Metal Carbides and Nitrides
About 1,100 pages of MXene research from Gogotsi’s group and its collaborators, from the 2011 discovery onwards: synthesis, properties, composites, and uses from energy storage to sensing.
Review chapters on graphene’s physics, among them its topology and chiral symmetry, and electron and phonon transport.
Physics the literature takes as known.
Basic Theory and Practical Methods
The standard text on density functional theory and the methods inside the codes listed on the Theory page: what a band-structure calculation does, and where it goes wrong.
Theory and Computational Approaches
What to use where density functional theory stops: GW and Bethe–Salpeter calculations, dynamical mean-field theory and quantum Monte Carlo. The background for excitons in monolayers and correlated states in moiré systems.
Quantum States and Electronic Transport
Electrons confined to two dimensions in semiconductors, the physics whose methods graphene’s first experiments borrowed: quantum transport, point contacts and quantum dots, written from the measurement side.
For turning the materials into components.
Semiconductors beyond graphene – the dichalcogenides, phosphorene, silicene – from their basic properties, growth and characterisation to state-of-the-art devices.
Device-minded chapters: contacts to graphene and radio-frequency transistors, dichalcogenide Schottky-barrier transistors and photodetectors, silicene, germanene, stannene and phosphorene. From 2016, so a record of what was then being weighed for chips.
16 journals and one preprint server, grouped by the part they play; 2 of them are free to read. New papers from the 11 marked ‘In the news feed’ also appear in this site’s news.
Every paper in them is on the subject.
Devoted to graphene and related two-dimensional materials since 2014, fundamental and applied alike. The one journal whose every paper is on the subject.
The fully open-access journal for the field, from the Nature Portfolio. It covers 2D materials whole, from their basic behaviour and synthesis to devices, so everything in it is free to read.
The chemistry of graphene and related 2D and layered materials: how they are made, modified and put to work. The place to look when the question is chemical rather than physical.
Selective, broad journals. Landmark results tend to appear here first.
Monthly and selective, and a frequent home for landmark 2D device results.
Selective research across materials science and engineering. The perspective that set out the field for everyone else appeared here.
Selective research from all of physics. For 2D materials that means the physics end: correlated and topological states, moiré systems and excitons.
Research from all of electronics, including work from industry. This is where 2D transistors are judged as electronics: contacts, variability and integration with silicon.
The day-to-day literature, each with its own leaning.
Short papers across nanoscience, and one of the most common homes for 2D devices, optics and growth.
Full-length papers and reviews across nanoscience, from synthesis to applications.
Materials with a use in view: synthesis, processing and devices. Much of the work on MXenes, inks and flexible electronics appears here.
The main journal of condensed-matter and materials physics. Band structures, transport theory and spectroscopy are worked out here in full, at a length the selective journals do not allow.
Graphene as one carbon material among many: production, graphene oxide, composites and characterisation, next to nanotubes and other carbons.
Short papers on electron devices, reviewed by device engineers. Read it to see 2D transistors measured with the figures of merit the chip industry uses.
Journals of review articles: the quickest way into a topic that is new to you.
Long reviews that stay useful for years. The standard introduction to graphene’s electrons is here, and so are both Nobel lectures for graphene.
Reviews and perspectives commissioned by the editors and written to orient readers from outside a subfield.
Reviews from across the chemical sciences, many of them on making, modifying and using 2D materials.
Where papers are posted before a journal has accepted them.
Most 2D-materials physics appears here first, often months before the journal version, and stays free. It is moderated but not peer reviewed, so check whether a paper was later published.
Open access journals are free to read, every article. Subscription journals need a library or institutional licence. Most journals here are in between: a subscription journal in which authors can pay for their article to be free, which the article page then says.
For a paper behind a paywall, search arXiv for its title. Many physics and materials papers have a version there posted by the authors, often the one accepted by the journal.
The books link to their publisher’s page through their DOI. University libraries often hold the ebook, and a library login on that page opens it.
By hand. The publisher and access terms of every journal were read from the publisher’s own site, and each entry records the day that was done. Every paper under “Start with” was checked against its DOI record, and so was every book’s title, authors, publisher, year and edition; the one book without a DOI was checked against a library catalogue.
There are no impact factors here. They describe a journal’s average, not the paper in front of you, and the journals above differ more in what they publish than in how often it is cited.