The L'Oréal-UNESCO program "For Women in Science" 2017 aims at promoting women in science and encourage them to pursue their scientific career by rewarding young researchers in PhD or post-doc. Marijana Milicevic, PhD student at C2N, is laureate for her project "Light on graphene".

Graphene (2004 discovery awarded with the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2009) is the best conductor of electricity known to date. This new class of extremely thin materials consisting of a single layer of carbon atoms, has outstanding electronic, optical and mechanical properties that will potentially revolutionize the world of microelectronics. However, these innovative materials that captivate physicists remain difficult to manipulate in the laboratory because their study requires an experimental resolution on the scale of the infinitely small, the atom.

Originally from Belgrade, Serbia, and currently PhD student at the Centre de Nanosciences et de Nanotechnologies, Marijana Milicevic has chosen to recreate this material in a new way, using light, in a photonic simulator. The objective of this tool is to use photons, constitutive particles of light, to recreate graphene in the laboratory in order to study it with better control. "The photons of the simulator are confined to micrometrically sized structures to equal or surpass the particular electronic properties of the material. Remarkably, Marijana studies particular structures of graphene, called "edge states", intrinsically very stable, to ensure transport without energy dissipation.

• Read on the Paris-Saclay University website
• Read on the Fondation l'Oréal website