The most recent innovation has been the discovery and preparation of graphene; single-monolayer carbon having a remarkable strength. This success has naturally led researchers to ask whether other materials might also be prepared in an analogous monolayer form and offer similarly amazing properties.
The present monograph summarizes all of the work carried out on such monolayer materials up to the beginning of 2017, with attention being restricted to those, like graphene, being composed of a single element. Most of the work done so far on these ‘elemental graphene analogues’ has been theoretical, but the existing experimental data suggest that they may well become as useful as graphene.