Graphene. If you’ve never heard about it, don’t worry, a lot of people haven’t, because it’s really only been “discovered” relatively recently, and most of the truly interesting news about it has been in the last year. The amazing thing is that we’ve actually been using it for centuries, in the form of the common pencil. Graphene is a form of carbon, much like carbon nanotubes and other fullerenes, with one major difference. While fullerenes are 3D structures of carbon atoms, graphene is a flat sheet. It’s a 2D lattice of carbon with bonds as strong as diamond. It’s this sheetlike nature that makes it so useful in a pencil. As you write, individual planes of graphite are sheared off the end and deposited on the paper. Those individual planes are pure graphene.
Read more on:
http://hplusmagazine.com/2010/05/03/graphene-next/
Graphene (the carbon found in pencils) can be used to create circuits that are almost superconducting, potentially speeding electronic components by as much as 1000 times, researchers have discovered. (That’s three terahertz — a jump of three orders of magnitude!)
“We’re talking about that smartphone in your pocket having a thousand times the computing power of your desktop PC, but using no more power than it does right now.”
