Propriétés physiques et électroniques des systèmes bidimensionnels sous champ magnétique intense – MAGBiSY

Up to very recently, truly two-dimensional systems (i.e. formed by a single sheet of atoms) were though to be thermodynamically unstable and could not exist in the free state. They were presumed to quickly curve or bend to produce novel and more stable nanostructures such as nano-cages. However, this common belief was contradicted in 2004 for the first time by the experimental isolation of graphene, a single layer of carbon atoms with exceptional electronic properties. Due to its peculiar hexagonal crystallographic structure, it was realized long ago that electrons in graphene obey the Dirac equation describing the dynamic of relativistic massless particles. But only recently these theoretical predictions received an experimental support, which triggered a general enthusiasm among the scientific community. Since then, much progress has been made and the physics of graphitic systems is rapidly expanding. Nevertheless, their special electronic properties are far from being completely understood nowadays and many questions still need to be addressed, both from an experimental as from a theoretical viewpoint. Furthermore, the discovery of graphene, first extracted using a simple multi-exfoliation technique, opened the route towards the characterization of other 2D candidate compounds, namely lamellar materials such as Boron Nitride (BN). Surprisingly, little have been done in this field which, although being considered as explorative research, deserve a proper examination. As one is concerned with electronic properties of nano-systems, the application of a very high magnetic field is a powerful and well controlled method of investigation. Technically, either static or pulsed magnetic fields can be generated, each of them having specific advantages that requires a particular experimental setup. In this scope, the present project aims at taking advantage of both techniques, by a joined research effort involving the Laboratoire National des Champs Magnétiques Pulsés (LNCMP) and the Grenoble High Magnetic Field Laboratory (GHMFL), through the development of 'state of the art' magneto-experiments such as electronic transport, photo-conductivity, Infra-Red transmission and micro-Raman characterisations.