Researchers from institutions in the Czech Republic, France, Canada, and the US have identified all the main criteria required to make artificial graphene. The idea is to use high-quality two-dimensional semiconductors to fabricate a new crystal with an "artificially" created honeycomb lattice - just like Graphene.

No one has yet succeeded in actually creating an artificial graphene, but at least now the scientists were able to extract all the parameters relevant for artificial graphene and suggest their proper combination. Hopefully this will lead to actual development of such a material. Indeed the researchers say that there's not principal obstacles preventing fabrication of artificial graphene, but they do admit that it's a rather tricky issue...

A Ph.D. student from the University of California, Riverside' won the Science as Art competition at 2012 MRS with his 0.05 millimeter nano-giraffe structure. He said that he accidentally saw this structure, and he enhanced it with Photoshop.

In his research, Amini developed a processing technique to grow single layer graphene from a molten phase. He used a process which melted a mixture of nickel, aluminum and carbon. When the mixture solidified, the nickel and aluminum formed the body of the giraffe while the carbon crystallized as a graphite cover.

Researchers from Michigan State University and the Shenyang Institute of Automation Chinese Academy of Sciences have developed a new method to accurately cut graphene. The researchers are using an atomic force microscope-based nanorobot to do the accurate cutting.

Graphene's crystal structure is asymmetry which means that nanoscale forces can be utilized as a real-time feedback to provide a closed-loop mechanism that is capable of cutting graphene with accurate control. The researchers say that their technique in combination with current parallel multi-tip technology can be used to cheaply produce graphene-based large-scale, high-efficiency nanodevices.

A research team from IBM Research in Zurich helped to create the smallest Olympic logo ever - made from five carbon rings in graphene:

They call the molecule Olympicene, the smallest molecule containing five carbon rings. The actual molecule was was synthesized at the University of Warwick, after the project was suggested by the Royal Society of Chemistry’s vice president Antony Williams. The work was done by Anish Mistry, a student working with PhD student Ben Moreton.