The Miracle Material

One million times thinner than a human hair and 200 times as strong as steel, is graphene the stuff of the future?

What sort of material is graphene? 

It’s a form of graphite – the “lead” found in an ordinary pencil. Essentially, it’s an ultra-thin sheet of graphite, which has been isolated so that it is only one carbon atom thick. Physicists had speculated about the existence of graphene since the 1940s, but had assumed that it could not exist in a stable form at room temperature. Early this century, it was discovered that it can. You can see it under an atomic microscope: a single 2D layer of carbon atoms, like a lattice of hexagons linked in a honeycomb shape.

What’s so great about graphene? 

It is the thinnest known material in the universe. It also attracts many other “superlatives”, says one of the scientists who discovered it: “It’s the strongest possible material, the most stretchable, the most permeable [by water], the most conductive… there are other materials that have one of those properties, but here it’s combined in one simple crystal.” Graphene is 200 times stronger than structural steel. “It would take an elephant, balanced on a pencil, to break through a sheet of graphene the thickness of [cling film],” says James Hone, professor of mechanical engineering at Columbia University. It conducts electricity better than superb conductors such as silver and copper; as a conductor of heat, it outperforms any other material. It is nearly transparent. But it can also stretch by some 20%. It has so many exceptional qualities that it is being touted as the material that will revolutionise the 21st century.

Who discovered graphene?