British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne has announced an investment of £50m to create a research hub to support the commercialisation of graphene, the Guardian reported yesterday.
The aim of the project will be to eventually manufacture products made using graphene in the UK. The potential of the substance, which is a sheet of carbon atoms measuring just one atom thick, is far-reaching. It conducts electricity a million times more effectively than copper and is the most transparent conductor known to man. University of Manchester scientists Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov won the Nobel Prize for Physics last year for their research into the material.
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| Airbus concept plane, as seen on worldislandparadise.com |
The implications for home electronics and transportation are already being seen: Samsung has created flat concept televisions from graphene, while Rice University in Texas has proposed a flexible touchscreen made of the material, and Airbus has exhibited a concept plane with transparent graphene walls, allowing passengers a 360 view of their surroundings as they fly.