Graphene: A new way of thinking about materials

First isolated at the University of Manchester in 2003 and announced in 2004 by a team led by Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov, Graphene is the first single-layer material ever discovered. 

At only one atom thick it is the thinnest material possible, yet it is also the strongest—200 times stronger than steel. It’s flexible, transparent and conducts electricity and heat incredibly well, giving this small material huge potential.

The isolation of graphene made a huge splash in science media in the 2010s because it has so many outstanding properties, and speculation about some of the potential applications for this wonder material ran wild.

Credit: © Nobel Media AB, Photo Yana Audas

Since 1859 scientists had been trying to  achieve a single layer using chemical and mechanical methods involving expensive and specialised equipment. However, when a single sheet of graphene was finally isolated, it was done using a cheap and familiar piece of equipment—ordinary sticky tape.

Sticky tape was already used to clean samples of graphite ready for experiments and examination by stripping off the top layer to expose the clean graphite beneath. The light bulb moment came when Andre and Kostya’s group wondered if, when they were throwing away the used pieces of sticky tape with graphite residue on them, they might in fact be throwing away graphene. As the anecdote goes, they fished a used piece of tape back out of the bin, put it under a microscope, and were delighted to see really thin flakes of graphite right there on the tape. Peeling and re-peeling made it possible to get right down to transparent films of graphene.

The actual sticky tape dispenser used in that story was donated to the Science and Industry Museum by Kostya Novoselov in 2006, and is shown above. It’s a fascinating object because it is so familiar and ordinary, yet it was pivotal to a Nobel Prize-winning breakthrough in materials science. It’s a prime example of the sort of everyday equipment that is part of a science story, but often lost over time precisely because it is so mundane. As Kostya has said, ‘Science should be fun and you don’t always need to do expensive multi-million-dollar experiments to be on the cutting edge of research,’ a point that this sticky tape dispenser really emphasises. 

But isolating a single sheet of graphene was just the start.

One of the biggest challenges of applying graphene to commercial products is how to produce industrial scale quantities of it. Manchester remains at the centre of graphene research and scientists at the National Graphene Institute are developing different methods of producing graphene aside from using sticky tape, including chemical deposition. 

Once it became possible to make graphene at scale, the race was on to find commercial applications for the new material. Some other early uses were to enhance the durability of paint, or make lightbulbs use less energy and last longer.

Graphene is stronger than steel yet lightweight and flexible, making it a good candidate material for clothing designed to be hard-wearing.