Graphene: The Superstrong, Superthin, and Superversatile Material That Will Revolutionize the World

NASA physicist Johnson (coauthor, On to the Asteroid) and researcher Meany review the history and chemistry of graphene and survey potentially transformative uses in all areas of engineering. Graphene is a form of pure carbon (like diamonds or the graphite in pencil lead) that is a sheet of atoms arranged in hexagons. This gives it distinctive mechanical, chemical, and electrical properties such as lightness, transparency, strength, slipperiness, and excellent electrical conductivity in two dimensions. Researchers are seeking to capitalize on these qualities by incorporating graphene and the related form, carbon nanotubes, into a variety of applications including construction material, power generation, delivery electronics, and medicine, among other items. The authors attempt to balance their enthusiastic presentation with a few caveats: there is at present no scalable method for producing graphene in industrial quantities, converting existing manufacturing processes to use graphene will be taking a risk (especially in risk-averse industries such as aerospace), the long-term health effects of graphene are unknown, and technologies may be patented but not developed. Occasional rhetorical tangents are only slight detractions.