Properties — ideal sheet vs real sample

Evidence: Well-supported that the ideal monolayer has extraordinary calculated and measured properties. Transferring those numbers onto a painted wall or a 1 Ah cell is a separate claim.

Electronic

• Linear bands near the Dirac points ([[timeline/1947]], [[timeline/2005]]).
• High mobility on good samples, especially encapsulated on hBN ([[timeline/2010]], [[timeline/2012]]).
• No native band gap in monolayer graphene. That is why digital-logic replacement of silicon stalled as an engineering ideal ([[timeline/2011]], [[logs/theories]]).
• Bilayers, nanoribbons, and certain stacks can open gaps — different objects.

Mechanical

• Intrinsic strength and stiffness of a pristine monolayer are among the highest measured for a 2D crystal (Lee / Hone Science 2008 nanoindentation is the usual citation). A polymer with 0.1 wt% platelets does not inherit that tensile strength.

Thermal / optical

• High in-plane thermal conductivity on clean samples; grain boundaries, wrinkles, and matrix interfaces dominate real heat-spreader products.
• Visible transparency of a monolayer is ~97.7% (Nair et al., Science 2008 is the usual optical landmark). That number made transparent-electrode pitches easy to write ([[timeline/2010]] Bae film).

Chemical

• Basal plane is relatively inert; edges and defects are where chemistry happens. That is why a stencil on gold is about holes and edges ([[posts/holey-graphene-molecular-stencil]]) and why GO is a different substance.

Rule for readers

Ask: which form ([[reference/forms]]), how measured, in what matrix, at what loading. If a press release quotes the ideal monolayer next to a bulk product, that is rhetoric.