Graphene Isolation
2004Novoselov & Geim's 2004 isolation of a single atomic layer of carbon (graphene) using mechanical exfoliation ("Scotch tape method") -- the first time a genuinely 2D crystal was isolated and shown to be stable and measurable. Real, on-topic theoretical precedent exists back to 1992 (carbon-nanotube-adjacent tight-binding theory of graphene sheets), confirmed via OpenAlex noise test -- not noise, a legitimate 12-year theoretical lead-up to the physical isolation.
Discovery Velocity
Normalized OpenAlex paper velocity, one point per year.
Originators
- Konstantin Novoselov
- Andre Geim
Landmark Paper
Checked 2026-08-30 — interim signal only, see docs/BASIC_ROADMAP.md Phase 10
Lineage
Refined by:
Connections
- is precursor to Graphenebasis: reasoned
Definitionally true, not an empirical co-citation claim: Graphene Isolation (Novoselov & Geim, 2004) is the founding discovery of graphene as a real material; the tracked Graphene innovation node represents its ongoing commercialization arc (production scaling, applications). Both nodes' own registered OpenAlex query term is the bare word "graphene" -- a numeric overlap check between two identical terms would be trivially ~100% and would not measure anything real, so this follows Tier 1 SS10's allowance for a reasoned edge on a definitionally-true claim rather than forcing an uninformative empirical check.