Finding the Killer App for Graphene

In 2002, a researcher experimenting with graphite -- aka pencil lead -- in physics professor Andre Geim’s lab at the U.K.’s University of Manchester discovered an ultra-thin layer of the substance sticking to a piece of Scotch tape in a wastebasket. Geim took the tape, folded it and pulled it apart a few times, and saw under a microscope that the layer kept getting thinner. As John Colapinto told the story in the New Yorker in 2014:

Together with graduate student Konstantin Novoselov and others in his lab, Geim spent two more years researching the ultra-thin, ultra-strong, ultra-flexible material before publishing their first findings in the journal Science in 2004. Six years later Geim and Novoselov had won the Nobel Prize in Physics for their graphene work, and researchers at universities and companies around the world -- but mainly in Asia -- were hard at work patenting new uses for the “wonder material.” Possibilities include batteries, drug delivery, fuel cells, tissue engineering, transistors and water filters, among dozens of others.