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Practical and Fundamental Impact of Epitaxial Graphene on Quantum Metrology

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Abstract

The discovery 8 years ago of the quantum Hall effect (QHE) in graphene sparked an immediate interest in the metrological community. Here was a material which was completely different from commonly used semiconductor systems and which seemed to have some uniques properties which could make it ideally suited for high-precision resistance metrology. However, measuring the QHE in graphene turned out to be not so simple as first thought. In particular the small size of exfoliated graphene samples made precision measurements difficult. This dramatically changed with the development of large-area graphene grown on SiC and in this short review paper we discuss the journey from first observation to the highest-ever precision comparison of the QHE.

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Acknowledgements

Many people have contributed to various parts of our research and the authors are grateful to Rositza Yakimova, Sergey Kopylov, Olga Kazakova, Nick Fletcher, Roland Goebel, Jonathan Williams, Dale Henderson, Stephen Giblin, Pravin Patel, Thomas Bjørnholm, Kasper Moth-Poulsen, Karin Cedergren, and Mikael Syväjärvi. This work was supported by the NMS Pathfinder Programme, Swedish Research Council and Foundation for Strategic Research, EU FP7 STREPs ConceptGraphene and SINGLE, EPSRC Grant EP/G041954 and the Science & Innovation Award EP/G014787.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Physical Laboratory, Hampton Road, Teddington, TW11 0LW, UK

    Theodoor Jan B. M. Janssen & Alexander Tzalenchuk

  2. Department of Microtechnology and Nanoscience, Chalmers University of Technology, 412 96, Göteborg, Sweden

    Samuel Lara-Avila & Sergey Kubatkin

  3. Physics Department, Lancaster University, Lancaster, LA1 4YB, UK

    Vladimir Fal’ko

  4. Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham Hill, Egham, TW20 0EX, UK

    Alexander Tzalenchuk

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  1. Theodoor Jan B. M. Janssen
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  2. Alexander Tzalenchuk
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  3. Samuel Lara-Avila
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  4. Sergey Kubatkin
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  5. Vladimir Fal’ko
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Correspondence to Theodoor Jan B. M. Janssen.

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Janssen, T.J.B.M., Tzalenchuk, A., Lara-Avila, S. et al. Practical and Fundamental Impact of Epitaxial Graphene on Quantum Metrology. MAPAN 28, 239–250 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12647-013-0064-y

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