FEATURE: Graphene – the not-so wonder material?

More than a decade after graphene's discovery, there are still challenges to overcome for the "wonder material" to go mainstream. Graphene was meant to transform everything from the car tyre to the condom. There has never been so much hype around a new material. It’s easy to see why: its sheets of carbon atoms are incredibly strong, super-elastic and conduct heat better than most metals. The problem with graphene, however, is that it has yet to live up to its expectations commercially. When it was discovered in 2004 by two professors at the University of Manchester, Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov, graphene was hailed as a wonder material that could disrupt many industries. The academics, who have since won the Nobel Prize for their work, produced the material during a Friday night experiment by playing around and using Scotch tape to create ultra-thin flakes from a chunk of graphite. And, although graphene proved to be the thinnest material known to scientists and just a single atom thick, it was also found to be 200 times stronger than steel. The latest development is that graphene could revolutionise smartphone batteries. Researchers at the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology found that, when a lithium-ion battery was coated with the material, its capacity was increased and charging was five times faster – the findings were published in the journal Nature Communications in November. However, the researchers admit that the challenge will be mass-production, and it could be some time before people are walking around with graphene-coated batteries in their pockets.