Pencil Mightier Than The Sword

Just watched an excellent Horizon programme on BBC 2  looking at developments in technology ,called "Tomorrow's World", by selecting some key areas such as space, biotechnology, nanotechnology and medical research. The mind boggling one for me was graphene, which is a thin layer of graphite sheets an atom thick which has http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/08/Pencils_hb.jpg/310px-Pencils_hb.jpgsome very unique properties. It is very very strong, has excellent conductivity, and impervious in hostile environments.






It's conductivity properties is better than silicon and could pave the way for faster,smaller, and higher memory computers.Several potential applications for graphene are under development, and many more have been proposed. These include lightweight, thin, flexible, yet durable display screens, electric circuits, and solar cells, as well as various medical, chemical and industrial processes enhanced or enabled by the use of new graphene materials.




Graphene was first studied from the shavings of a graphite pencil and then sellotape used to treat the graphite into thinner and thinner wafers until it is just one atom thick , just by the use of sticky tape!