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You may not have been aware, but this week is Graphene Week 2015, which marks a yearly week-long conference at the University of Manchester based around the emerging science and technological applications of graphene. This seemed as good a time as any to take a look at graphene: what it is, why some scientists are excited by its potential, and how it might make its way to your hands in the near future.
Even if you’ve not got a particularly scientific background, you’ve likely at least heard of graphene. Currently, it seems like not a week goes by without a new scientific study on graphene being published, or a new article coming out espousing its potential applications. It might seem hard to believe that graphene itself was only isolated just over a decade ago, back in 2003, by two scientists at the University of Manchester: Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov. The method of isolation was somewhat rudimentary: they peeled layers off of graphite, a form of carbon, using sellotape, and kept peeling layers away until they were left with graphene.
