Research in graphene has evolved into a stage in which other isolated atomic planes of materials can now be reassembled in a chosen sequence, as in building with Lego where the blocks are defined with one-atomic-plane precision [1]. Due to their weak interlayer forces “Van der Waals” crystals can be separated to individual layers of a single crystallographic domain before reorienting and transferring them to form a new stack. Wide range of such high-quality artificial material was already demonstrated: improved tunnel transistors, solar cells, LEDs, and more. Theoretical physics predicted long ago like fractal quantum states in magnetic field was recently probed in super-lattices formed between the layers, and new phenomena like valley currents in systems of controlled inversion symmetries are studied. The first part of the talk is aimed to give a wide review of the recent developments and research done in Manchester in this field (not only for physicists).

The second part will focus on superconductivity, induced in a very "clean" and protected graphene layers stacked between hexagonal boron nitride crystals, where electrons pairs can travel monochromatically for many micrometres before experiencing any scattering or de-coherence. Thanks to a nearly perfect electrical contact between the graphene and the superconductor, we observe extremely high superconducting currents that can be tuned by controlling the graphene properties. These currents persist even in the presence of high magnetic fields (corresponding to ~1000 flux quanta in the junction) and enable us to study a new regime of proximity induced superconductivity [2].

[1] "Van der Waals heterostructures." Nature499.7459 (2013): 419-425.

[2] "Proximity superconductivity in ballistic graphene, from Fabry-Perot oscillations to random Andreev states in magnetic field." arXiv:1504.03286 (2015)