The team led by Son Jeong-gon discovered that when graphene is shrunk to a 10 nanometer scale, not only its electrical properties but also thermal conductivity and thermoelectric properties are significantly altered, the Korea Institute of Science and Technology said.

"Here, we fabricate large-area, sub-10 nanometer single and bilayer graphene nanomeshes from block copolymer self-assembly and measure the thermal conductivity, thermoelectric and electrical transport properties to experimentally verify the effect of sub-10 naometer quantum confinement, phonon-edge scattering and cross-plane coupling," the researchers aid in a paper.

"We hope that nano-patterned 2D materials can be expected to contribute to obtaining highly efficient and flexible thermoelectric materials for the self-powered devices of wearable electronics," Son said.

Their findings were published in the science journal "Nano nergy." (Yonhap)