1 00:00:01,840 --> 00:00:11,080 The familiar gadgets of everyday life they get faster slicker and slimmer but an amazing new 2 00:00:11,080 --> 00:00:17,140 material discovered by British scientists will transform this technology forever it will allow 3 00:00:17,140 --> 00:00:24,640 us to slim it all down to the thickness of a piece of paper it's called graphene even under 4 00:00:24,640 --> 00:00:30,280 the microscope it doesn't look much but it won a Nobel Prize for the two scientists who discovered 5 00:00:30,280 --> 00:00:34,500 and it's been lauded as the miracle material of the 21st century. 6 00:00:35,240 --> 00:00:38,520 It's stronger than diamond, more conductive than copper, 7 00:00:38,960 --> 00:00:40,119 more flexible than rubber, 8 00:00:40,320 --> 00:00:43,079 and it's so thin you can barely see it with the naked eye. 9 00:00:44,119 --> 00:00:47,560 Graphene is made from the stuff in your pencil, graphite. 10 00:00:48,100 --> 00:00:52,240 And graphite is millions of microscopic layers of tightly packed carbon. 11 00:00:52,240 --> 00:00:57,679 When I put my thumb into the graphite, give it a rub around, 12 00:00:57,679 --> 00:01:01,500 And it gets covered in a layer of it. 13 00:01:01,500 --> 00:01:09,060 If I then press that back onto the paper, millions of layers are peeled off. 14 00:01:09,060 --> 00:01:15,900 If I keep smudging my thumb across the paper, these layers of graphite get thinner and thinner. 15 00:01:15,900 --> 00:01:21,379 And if I keep going, eventually I'll end up with a layer of graphite one atom thin. 16 00:01:21,379 --> 00:01:24,219 And at that point, I've got graphene. 17 00:01:24,219 --> 00:01:29,760 Materials scientist Dr Aravind Vijayaragavan works with the team who discovered it. 18 00:01:29,760 --> 00:01:36,079 This is graphene at about 20 million times magnification and you can see the individual 19 00:01:36,079 --> 00:01:41,680 carbon atoms which are the white dots you see here and each carbon atom is connected 20 00:01:41,680 --> 00:01:43,099 to three other carbon atoms. 21 00:01:43,099 --> 00:01:50,180 Now the carbon carbon bond is so strong that actually makes graphene 200 times stronger 22 00:01:50,180 --> 00:01:51,719 than steel. 23 00:01:51,719 --> 00:01:56,980 To demonstrate graphene's properties, Aravind dissolves graphite, the stuff from your pencil, 24 00:01:56,980 --> 00:02:03,219 in a solvent, then injects it into a special printer cartridge. This sprays a thin layer 25 00:02:03,219 --> 00:02:08,740 of graphene onto a cellophane backing, which holds the thin graphene layer together. 26 00:02:08,740 --> 00:02:12,639 What we have here then is cellophane coated with a layer of graphene. 27 00:02:12,639 --> 00:02:13,639 You sure? 28 00:02:13,639 --> 00:02:14,639 Yes. 29 00:02:14,639 --> 00:02:16,259 Because it just looks like a piece of cellophane to me. 30 00:02:16,259 --> 00:02:22,539 On its own, cellophane cannot conduct electricity, but when graphene is added, something remarkable 31 00:02:22,539 --> 00:02:23,539 happens. 32 00:02:23,539 --> 00:02:30,020 We have an LED lamp there, and as soon as you wire it up, the lamp starts to glow, which 33 00:02:30,020 --> 00:02:34,560 means that there is current flowing through a piece of plastic. 34 00:02:34,560 --> 00:02:39,879 As graphene is so thin, there is very little electrical resistance, making it the most 35 00:02:39,879 --> 00:02:45,860 conductive material ever created, allowing scientists to shrink our circuit boards, leading 36 00:02:45,860 --> 00:02:52,840 to smaller phones and computers. But graphene has another key property, flexibility. 37 00:02:52,840 --> 00:02:57,860 You can essentially pick it up and you can bend it and you can twist it and still the 38 00:02:57,860 --> 00:03:00,960 current flows through it and the lamp stays on. 39 00:03:00,960 --> 00:03:03,400 That is really quite incredible. 40 00:03:03,400 --> 00:03:08,840 This flexibility is getting electronics giants excited. Prototype animations show graphene 41 00:03:08,840 --> 00:03:14,680 applied to super thin bendy plastics, making phones and tablets foldable. 42 00:03:14,680 --> 00:03:18,120 So this is really revolutionary. This is going to change things, isn't it? 43 00:03:18,280 --> 00:03:18,639 Yes. 44 00:03:19,419 --> 00:03:26,659 Graphene's thinness also means it's 97% transparent, tackling a problem we face with touchscreen technology. 45 00:03:27,520 --> 00:03:33,139 Today's mobile phones contain an element called indium in the touchscreens to make them work. 46 00:03:33,379 --> 00:03:40,139 It's rare and becoming more expensive, and the coating that it makes is brittle and inflexible. 47 00:03:40,139 --> 00:03:46,099 flexible. On the other hand, super bendy, conductive and transparent graphene is made from 48 00:03:46,099 --> 00:03:53,159 carbon, the sixth most abundant element in the universe. But high quality graphene is currently 49 00:03:53,159 --> 00:03:57,819 hard to manufacture on a large scale. Any imperfections in the process dramatically 50 00:03:57,819 --> 00:04:04,080 reduces its conductivity. If scientists can crack this problem, it won't just be consumer 51 00:04:04,080 --> 00:04:09,919 technology that will change. Electric car batteries built from millions of layers of graphene 52 00:04:09,919 --> 00:04:13,479 will charge in minutes, thanks to its high conductivity. 53 00:04:14,400 --> 00:04:17,519 Microscopic graphene sensors inside our body 54 00:04:17,519 --> 00:04:19,639 could detect harmful microbes, 55 00:04:19,639 --> 00:04:22,639 responding to tiny changes in conductivity 56 00:04:22,639 --> 00:04:25,399 produced by individual bacteria cells. 57 00:04:25,399 --> 00:04:28,959 Graphene may well be the biggest technological revolution 58 00:04:28,959 --> 00:04:30,800 since the silicon chip.