How to make graphene superconducting

Abstract

Graphene is the physical realization of many fundamental concepts and phenomena in solid state-physics, but in the long list of graphene remarkable properties, a fundamental block is missing: superconductivity. Making graphene superconducting is relevant as the easy manipulation of this material by nanolytographic techniques paves the way to nanosquids, one-electron superconductor-quantum dot devices, superconducting transistors at the nano-scale and cryogenic solid-state coolers. Here we explore the doping of graphene by adatoms coverage. We show that the occurrence of superconductivity depends on the adatom in analogy with graphite intercalated compounds (GICs). However, most surprisingly, and contrary to the GIC case, Li covered graphene is superconducting at much higher temperature with respect to Ca covered graphene.