Home > News > How UK wonder substance graphene can't and won't benefit UK: Once a research-rich economy the UK has fallen behind in innovation with UK firms allegedly either incapable or unwilling to exploit inventions
December 4th, 2013
How UK wonder substance graphene can't and won't benefit UK: Once a research-rich economy the UK has fallen behind in innovation with UK firms allegedly either incapable or unwilling to exploit inventions
Abstract:
To see what's really at stake in this week's autumn statement from George Osborne, do yourself a favour: duck out of the Westminster argy-bargy, hit the M1 and don't stop until you've reached Manchester. Then button-hole a physicist into showing you the wonder stuff discovered by two University colleagues just a few years ago.
It's called graphene and it's the thinnest material on earth - almost a million times slimmer than a strand of hair. I saw it lying on a wafer of silicon and it resembled nothing so much as breath on a windowpane.
Almost everything about graphene begs to be inscribed in legend. There's its discovery: a couple of Russian émigrés at Manchester engage in a "Friday night experiment" by peeling away at a pencil lead with sticky tape, until they isolate the one-atom-thick substance dreamt of by researchers for more than half a century.
Source:
theguardian.com
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