Is graphene starting to live up to its hype?

When graphene was first isolated in 2004 the so called “super material” was meant to change the world. The material has remarkable properties - it is 200 times stronger than steel, transparent, extremely light, flexible and also exhibits excellent electrical conductivity. Twenty years on it is starting to live up to the original hype and is being incorporated into a wide range of materials and products. RAZOR’s Reya El-Salahi traveled to Cambridge to meet Prof. Sir Colin Humphreys, Co-founder and CSO of Paragraf, one of the first companies in the world to mass produce graphene-based electronic devices. Founded with Dr. Simon Thomas and Ivor Guiney in 2018, after a breakthrough they made at the University of Cambridge, the company now produces enough graphene to make 150,000 electronic sensors a day. Graphene was first isolated by the University of Manchester’s Prof. Sir. Andre Geim and Prof. Sir. Konstantin Novoselov. Manchester has become the UK’s home of Graphene and 2D materials research. Opening the National Graphene Institute in 2015 and the Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre - known as the ‘GEIC’ in 2018. Apart from electronics, graphene is mostly incorporated into another material to lighten and strengthen it. It’s been used in building materials such as concrete, consumer products such as plastic bottles and in trainers, and also in the automotive and aerospace industries.