This themed issue of the Journal of Materials Chemistry has as its focus the chemistry of graphene. It seems to me to have been a relatively short time since the Editor of Nature Nanotechnology requested a News and Views article from me about what at least some implications of chemistry of graphene might be. The quality and breadth of articles presented here in this themed issue show that the chemistry of graphene is attracting attention, both because of growing fundamental interest in reaction mechanisms, as well as a route to new materials. I recall attending a lecture by Jack Fischer of the University of Pennsylvania many years ago, in which he referred to carbon nanotubes as a "fourth state of matter" because an individual CNT could itself be considered as a crystal, just as an aggregate of closest packed identical CNTs was also a crystal. To the physicist with an interest in 2-dimensional electron gas physics or its utility for electronic devices, graphene has a particular meaning, just as to the chemist and materials scientist interested in, say, generating new materials through chemistry, it can be considered as a novel macromolecule with which to generate new chemical products and materials.
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