  Graphite is one of the most chemically inert materials. Its elementary
constituent, monolayer graphene, is generally expected to inherit most of the
parent material's properties including chemical inertness. Here we show that,
unlike graphite, defect-free monolayer graphene exhibits a strong activity with
respect to splitting molecular hydrogen, which is comparable to that of
metallic and other known catalysts for this reaction. We attribute the
unexpected catalytic activity to surface corrugations (nanoscale ripples), a
conclusion supported by theory. Nanoripples are likely to play a role in other
chemical reactions involving graphene and, because nanorippling is inherent to
atomically thin crystals, can be important for two dimensional materials in
general.
