Dr Monica Craciun

Senior Lecturer

Extension: 3656

Telephone: 01392 723656

Dr Monica F. Craciun joined the University of Exeter in January 2010 as research fellow and took up the position of senior lecturer in Engineering in June 2012. She is full-time staff of the Centre for Graphene Science funded through the EPSRC/HEFCE Science and Innovation Award, as well as staff of the Functional Materials Research Group. Her expertise lies in the studies of graphene and various organic materials and she has a strong track record of interdisciplinary collaboration with a fundamental research output in the fields of materials science, physics and chemistry. Her research is regularly published in leading and high-impact peer reviewed journals such as Nature Nanotechnology, Advanced Materials, Nano Letters, Journal of the American Chemical Society, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of USA (PNAS), Physical Review Letters, Nano Today, etc.. Since 2004 she has published over 30 papers, which have attracted more than 500 citations, she has an h-index of 12 and she has given more than 20 talks at international conferences. Dr Craciun is a member of the American Physical Society and Institute of Physics. She is also a reviewer for numerous journals including those from the American Chemical Society, American Physical Society, and the American Institute of Physics.

Current research highlights. The current research interests of Dr Craciun are focused on the electronic properties of graphene and functionalised graphene materials. Highlights of her recent research include the development of novel techniques for direct writing electrical circuits in graphene, which is a step forward to flexible and transparent electronics [Nano Lett. 11 3912 (2011)] and the achievement of high carrier density regime in graphene by ionic gating [PNAS (2011)]. More recently, in collaboration with Dr S. Russo, she discovered the GraphExeter material [Advanced Materials 24, 2844 (2012)], which is a replacement material for the expensive and brittle transparent electrodes used nowadays by the display industry. This research has been reported by all the major media worldwide (e.g. BBC, Forbes, Times, etc..) whereas the paper reporting these results has been featured as the most downloaded article of the journal and has topped the Advanced Materials Top 40 charts in May 2012. This groundbreaking discovery has established the Centre for Graphene Science as an internationally recognized hub for chemical functionalization of graphene and it is attracting a growing number of world leading industrial partners. Dr Craciun is also the leading author of a review paper featured as the Science Direct Top 10 Hottest Articles [Nano Today 6 42 (2011)] and co-authored a chapter in the book “Graphene - Synthesis, Characterization, Properties and Applications”, ISBN: 978-953-307-292-0.

Past Research. During her PhD she worked on the electronic properties of various organic molecular systems and demonstrated for the first time the possibility of inducing a metallic state in an entire class of molecular materials – metal-phthalocyanines (MPc) [Adv Mater (2006)], revealed the sensitivity of electrical conduction of MPc to different metals [J Am Chem Soc (2005)] and realised the first MPc-based ambipolar organic transistor [Appl. Phys. Lett. (2005)]. She was also the first to demonstrate that in pentacene strong electron-electron interaction effects can create an insulating state [Phys. Rev. B (2009)]. She held a prestigious Fellowship of the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science at the University of Tokyo, which enable her to work on electrical transport in graphene [Phys. Rev. Lett. (2008); New J. Phys. (2009); Phys. Rev. B (2010)]. Her major achievement in this period was the demonstration that trilayer graphene is a semimetal with a gate-tuneable band overlap [Nature Nanotechnol. (2009)].

Funding

EPSRC: EP/J000396/1 (grant for strategic collaborative research with Japan), EP/G036101/1, EP/K031538/1 and EP/K017160/1
Royal Society: Research grant 2011/R1 no.SH-05323
EU-FP7: Infrastrucuture Initiative EuroMagNET II, ICT-2011 FET-Open Challenging Current Thinking, NMP.2012.2.2-2 Materials for data storage

Selected publications

“Electronic transport through electron-doped metal phthalocyanine materials”, M. F. Craciun, S. Rogge, M. J. L. Den Boer, S. Margadonna, K. Prassides, Y. Iwasa, A. F. Morpurgo, Adv. Mater. 18, 320 (2006).

“Correlation between molecular orbitals and doping dependence of the electrical conductivity in electron-doped metal-phthalocyanine compounds” M. F. Craciun, S. Rogge, A. F. Morpurgo, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 127, 12210 (2005).

"Shot noise in ballistic graphene" Daneau R, Wu F, Craciun MF, Russo S, Tomi MY, Salmilehto J, Morpurgo AF, Hakonen PJ. ,Phys Rev Lett, 100, 196802 (2008).

“Trilayer graphene is a semimetal with a gate-tunable band overlap”, M. F. Craciun, S. Russo, M. Yamamoto, J. B. Oostinga, A. F. Morpurgo, S. Tarucha, Nature Nanotech. 4, 383 (2009).

“Tuneable elctronic properties in graphene”, M. F. Craciun, S. Russo, M. Yamamoto, S. Tarucha, Nano Today. 6, 42 (2011).

“Accessing the transport properties of graphene and its multilayers at high carrier density” J. Ye, M. F. Craciun, M. Koshino, S. Russo, S. Inoue, H. Yuan, H. Shimotani, A. F. Morpurgo, Y. Iwasa, PNAS 108, 13002 (2011).

“Nanopatterning of fluorinated graphene by electron beam irradiation”, F. Withers, T. H. Bointon, M. Dubois, S. Russo, M. F. Craciun, Nano Lett. 11, 3912 (2011).

“Novel highly conductive and transparent graphene based conductors” I. Khrapach, F. Withers, T. H. Bointon, D. K. Pplyushkin, W. L. Barnes, S. Russo, M. F. Craciun, Adv. Mater. 24, 2844 (2012).

Academic Education

PhD in Physics,Kavli Institute of Nanoscience, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands (2006)
MSc in Materials Engineering (Materials for Microelectronics), Catholic University Leuven, Belgium, (2004)
MSc in Physics, Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France (2001)
MSc in Applied Physics, University of Bucharest, Romania (2001)

Positions held

Proleptic Research Fellow in Graphene, University of Exeter (2010-2012)
Research Fellow, Department of Applied Physics, University of Tokyo, Japan (2007-2009)
Post doctoral researcher, Mesa+ Institute for Nanotechnology, The University of Twente, The Netherlands (2006-2007)
PhD researcher, Kavli Institute of Nanoscience, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands (2002-2006)