Scientists have managed to create the potentially revolutionary material graphene with just some soap and a kitchen blender.
A British-Irish team of researchers took some graphite powder and poured it into a blender along with some water and dishwashing detergent. By blending at high speed they had successfully created graphene, demonstrating that the shearing force generated by a rapidly rotating blade is sufficient to separate the layers of graphene without damaging their structure, with their results published in the journal Nature Materials.
Graphene is a one-atom-thick sheet of carbon, where the atoms are arranged in a two-dimensional honeycomb structure, and is strong, light, nearly transparent and an excellent conductor of heat and electricity, making it an exciting material for many applications in the future.
Scientists are investigating a number of different methods to quickly and cheaply produce high quality, defect-free graphene because of it potential uses in industry.