Graphene

Graphene is one of the many exotic forms of crystallisation of carbon. It is a purely two-dimensional structure with all carbon atoms connected in form of hexagonal benzene rings . Graphene is characterized by an extremely high mechanical strength in its planar direction, the highest of all materials known. In 2010, the Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov (University of Manchester) for their basic studies on graphene. To this day, graphene is used in research and physics applications only. By 2014, there are no products containing graphene; however, graphene makes it possible to develop processors with a staggering clock speed of more than 100 gigahertz, much faster than any silicon computer chip can be today. Accordingly, graphene has a huge economic potential. In future, products on a graphene basis could be installed by the million in computers, solar cells or displays.