Graphene is a crystalline allotrope of carbon with 2-dimensional properties. Graphene is very thin and nearly transparent and is a single layer of graphite. It is remarkably strong at 200 times stronger than steel and conducts heat and electricity with great efficiency. Graphene is one million times thinner than a single human hair; so thin that it is actually considered two dimensional. Graphene is carbon atoms densely packed in a regular chicken wire (hexagonal) pattern. Columbia University stated it is “so strong it would take an elephant, balanced on a pencil, to break through a sheet of graphene the thickness of Saran Wrap”.

Graphene was identified in 2004 by Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov at Manchester University. They used adhesive tape to remove single layers from the surface of graphite and deposit them on a silicon wafer. The isolation of graphene was a breakthrough for which Geim and Novoselov were awarded the 2010 Nobel prize for Physics. In its purest form, graphene possesses an unsurpassed combination of electrical, mechanical and thermal properties, which gives it the potential to replace existing materials in a wide range of applications and, in the long term, to enable new applications.