A construction of thickness-minimal graphs (Q1820166)

The thickness of a graph G is the minimum number of planar subgraphs whose union is G. A t-minimal graph is a graph of thickness t which contains no proper subgraph of thickness t. Tutte showed that each t- minimal graph (t\(\geq 2)\) is 2-connected with minimum degree at least t. Hobbs and Grossman showed that each t-minimal graph is t-edge-connected. The authors show, by constructive means, that there exist infinitely many t-minimal graphs having minimum degree t (and thus edge-connectivity t) and whose connectivity is 2.