The use of graphene in a form of discontinuous flakes in polymer composites limits the full exploitation of the unique properties of graphene, thus requiring high filler loadings for achieving- for example- satisfactory electrical and mechanical properties. Herein centimetre-scale CVD graphene/polymer nanolaminates have been produced by using an iterative ‘lift-off/float-on’ process and have been found to outperform, for the same graphene content, state-of-the-art flake-based graphene polymer composites in terms of mechanical reinforcement and electrical properties. Most importantly these thin laminate materials show a high electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding effectiveness, reaching 60 dB for a small thickness of 33 μm, and an absolute EMI shielding effectiveness close to 3·10⁵ dB cm² g⁻¹ which is amongst the highest values for synthetic, non-metallic materials produced to date.

Measurements of the in-plane magnetic-field penetration depth for the n-doped high-${\mathit{T}}_{\mathit{c}}$ superconductor ${\mathrm{Nd}}_{1.85}$ ${\mathrm{Ce}}_{0.15}$ ${\mathrm{CuO}}_{4\mathrm{-}\mathrm{\delta }}$ are reported. The measurements were performed at 4 GHz by a microstrip resonator technique on thin films obtained by laser ablation. The temperature dependence of the penetration depth is carefully analyzed and the energy gap-ratio is estimated. The results confirm that ${\mathrm{Nd}}_{1.85}$ ${\mathrm{Ce}}_{0.15}$ ${\mathrm{CuO}}_{4\mathrm{-}\mathrm{\delta }}$ behaves as a BCS-like superconductor.

The temperature dependence of the in-plane magnetic penetration depth, ${\lambda }_{ab}(T)$, has been measured in a $c$-axis oriented polycrystalline ${\mathrm{CaC}}_6$ bulk sample using a high-resolution mutual inductance technique. A clear exponential behavior of ${\lambda }_{ab}(T)$ has been observed at low temperatures, strongly suggesting isotropic $s$-wave pairing. Data fit using the standard BCS theory yields ${\lambda }_{ab}(0)=(720\pm 80)\AA$ and $\Delta (0)=(1.79\pm 0.08)\mathrm{meV}$. The ratio $2\Delta (0)/k_B{T}_c=(3.6\pm 0.2)$ gives indication for a weakly coupled superconductor.

We study the presence of dark and bright modes in a planar metamaterial with a double rod unit cell introducing geometric asymmetry in rod lengths. The dark mode displays a Fano-type resonance with a sharp asymmetric profile, rendering it far more sensitive than the bright mode to slight variations of the dielectric environment. This peculiar feature may envisage the possible application of the asymmetric dimer metamaterial as an optical sensor for chemical or biological analysis, provided that the effect of material losses on the dark mode quality factor is properly taken into account.