Sci-Tech : Graphene: a novel material with myriad uses. After the discovery of one form of carbon — fullerenes — was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1996, this year's Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to Andre K.
Geim and Konstantin S. Novoselov, both at the University of Manchester, U.K., for succeeding in producing, isolating, identifying and characterizing another form of carbon — graphene. Graphene. High-quality graphene is strong, light, nearly transparent and an excellent conductor of heat and electricity.
Its interactions with other materials and with light and its inherently two-dimensional nature produce unique properties, such as the bipolar transistor effect, ballistic transport of charges and large quantum oscillations. At the time of its isolation in 2004,[1] researchers studying carbon nanotubes were already familiar with graphene's composition, structure and properties, which had been calculated decades earlier.
Sci-Tech : Graphene: a novel material with myriad uses. Graphene. Graphene Will Change The Way We Live. The theory behind the substance graphene was first explored by theoretical physicist Philip Wallace in 1947 as kind of a starting point when he was doing research trying to understand the electronic properties of more complex, 3D graphite. although the name graphene wasn't actually coined until 40 years later, where it was used to describe single sheets of graphite.
In other words, it's the name given to a flat monolayer of carbon atoms that are tightly packed into a 2D honeycomb lattice; like a molecular chicken-wire that is one atom thick. It's essentially the basic building block for graphitic materials of all other dimensionalities; it's a stepping stone to building bigger things. Graphene in itself however wasn't discovered until 2004 in its full observable and testable form. Since then, in the past 6 years, scientists have discovered that the substance retains some amazing properties.