Separate from companies and conspiracies. Dates are first clear documented appearance of the idea, not “the idea became true.”
| When | Idea | Status | Where on this site |
|---|---|---|---|
| Late 18th c. | Graphite is elemental carbon, not lead | Well-supported consensus | pre-chemistry |
| 1859 | Graphite can be oxidized into a lamellar oxide | Well-supported | before-1900 |
| 1947 | Single graphite layer as a calculable electron system; linear bands at zone corners | Well-supported theory | 1947 |
| 1960s–80s | Strict 2D crystals vs Mermin–Wagner-type expectations | Context; often over-simplified in pop history | 1963-2003 |
| 1962 / 1986 | Monolayer carbon from oxide; name graphene | Well-supported | 1962 |
| 2004–2005 | Isolated monolayer on insulator + Dirac-fermion transport | Well-supported experiment | 2004 · 2005-2009 |
| 2005+ | Graphene as a platform for other 2D crystals and heterostructures | Well-supported research program | 2010 |
| 2010s | “Graphene replaces silicon” as an engineering ideal | Mostly unmet; band-gap and contact limits | 2011-2012 |
| 2013+ | Flagship-scale coordinated application push | Well-supported as a program | 2013 |
| 2015 | Holey graphene as a molecular stencil / weed barrier on gold | Well-supported method | holey-graphene-molecular-stencil |
Add a row when a new picture appears (new Hamiltonian, new process ideal, new “what graphene is for”), not when a company repeats a slide.