Nobel Prize Winners in Physics Used Keithley Instrumentation

Mark Hoersten, Keithley’s vice president, marketing, noted, “It has given everyone here enormous satisfaction to know that our products have been a part of a ground-breaking research effort like this one. Coincidentally, three Keithley employees were actually in Geim and Novoselov’s labs on a routine customer visit when the call came in from the Nobel Prize Committee, informing Geim and Novoselov of their win.”

Geim and Novoselov first isolated graphene, a one-atom-thick form of carbon with a hexagonal (six-sided), honeycomb-like structure, in 2004. Potential applications of this material, sometimes described as “the perfect atomic lattice,” include the development of new super-strong and lightweight materials for making satellites, aircraft, and automobiles. Electronics applications may include the development of ultra-fast and ultra-high-bandwidth transistors, innovative displays, biodevices, single-molecule gas detectors, and ultracapacitors.

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Robert Green, one of the Keithley employees on hand in the winners’ labs when the call came from the Nobel committee, explains, “They’ve been using two of our Model 2400 SourceMeter instruments and one of our Model 2182A Nanovoltmeters to characterize both the resistivity and the very high carrier mobility of the thinnest crystalline material ever isolated. Ultra-sensitive, precision sourcing and measurement equipment such as the Model 2400 SourceMeter instrument, which can output very low levels of current, and the Model 2182A, which can measure the smallest voltages, are essential to making repeatable and reliable measurements.”