Over the past ten years, a primary focus has been on two-dimensional materials created from atomically thin sheets. Hone and collaborators have shown that an atomic sheet of carbon, known as graphene, is the strongest material ever measured. Hone has also developed new ways of manipulating two-dimensional materials to create layered heterostructures, in which intrinsic properties can be studied due to the lack of environmental disorder, electrical and optical devices demonstrate the highest performance, and new properties emerge at atomically precise interfaces. In collaboration with biologists, Hone has developed tools that have revealed new processes by which cells sense the physical properties of their environment at the sub-micrometer scale.
Hone received a BS in physics from Yale University in 1990 and a PhD in physics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1998.