Graphene

Industry is continually looking for new materials to offer stronger and more reliable performance but the next game-changing development is expected to be graphene it's a substance that's long been theorized to exist but has proven to be so complicated to manufacture that it's taken until now to become feasible as the name would suggest it is derived from graphite which is the material you'll be familiar with that's used in pencils made entirely from carbon atoms graphite is a three-dimensional structure but the exciting thing about graphene is that it's two-dimensional what this means is that the carbon is arranged perfectly in a hexagonal honeycomb formation that's only 0.3 nanometers thick and there's just 0.1 nanometers between each of the atoms in practice this new arrangement offers huge benefits that are only just starting to be fully understood graphene can conduct electricity far more efficiently than copper for example it's also 200 times stronger than steel but six times lighter it's almost completely transparent because it only absorbs two percent of light and it's impermeable to gases even the lightest ones and it can also have chemical components added to the surface to alter its properties researchers see graphene more as a platform that developers will be able to arrange in a way that plays to their needs it could for example revolutionize touch screen technologies be incorporated to make lighter composite materials and has a number of uses and electronics too the possibilities are truly endless and it's expected to be possible to produce it in commercial quantities within the next decade.