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Published Online April 3, 2008
Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1156965

Brevia

Submitted on February 25, 2008
Accepted on March 26, 2008

Fine Structure Constant Defines Visual Transparency of Graphene

R. R. Nair 1, P. Blake 1, A. N. Grigorenko 1, K. S. Novoselov 1, T. J. Booth 1, T. Stauber 2, N. M. R. Peres 2, A. K. Geim 1*

1 Manchester Centre for Mesoscience & Nanotechnology, University of Manchester, M13 9PL, Manchester, UK.
2 Department of Physics, University of Minho, P-4710-057, Braga, Portugal.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
A. K. Geim , E-mail: geim{at}man.ac.uk

There is a small group of phenomena in condensed matter physics, which are defined only by the fundamental constants and do not depend on material parameters. Examples are the resistivity quantum h/e2 that appears in a variety of transport experiments and the magnetic flux quantum h/2e playing an important role in the physics of superconductivity. By and large, it requires sophisticated facilities and special measurement conditions to observe any of these phenomena. We show that the opacity of suspended graphene is defined solely by the fine structure constant, {alpha} = e2/{hslash}c {approx}1/137, the parameter that describes coupling between light and relativistic electrons and is traditionally associated with quantum electrodynamics rather than materials science. Despite being only one atom thick, graphene is found to absorb a significant ({pi}{alpha} =2.3%) fraction of incident white light, a consequence of graphene's unique electronic structure.


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
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Science 324, 1312-1314
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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)