Although they found that graphene makes very good chemical sensors, researchers at Illinois have discovered an unexpected “twist"—that the sensors are better when the graphene is “worse"-more imperfections improved performance. “This is quite the opposite of what you would want for transistors, for example,” explained Eric Pop, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and a member of the interdisciplinary research team. “Finding that the less perfect they were, the better they worked, was counter intuitive at first.”
