Uploaded December 2021 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago
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 2020 to celebrate his achievements and research. The event would normally be an in-person event with the medal presentation and lecture being given by the winner.
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 Professor Le Lay’s presentation he 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.
*Carbon NanoTubes
**Synthetic 2D analogues made of pure elements: boron (X = B) ... to tellurium (X = Te)
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 2020 to celebrate his achievements and research. The event would normally be an in-person event with the medal presentation and lecture being given by the winner.
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 Professor Le Lay’s presentation he 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.
*Carbon NanoTubes
**Synthetic 2D analogues made of pure elements: boron (X = B) ... to tellurium (X = Te)
