graphene

"Graphene" is a combination of "graphite" and the suffix -ene, named by Hanns-Peter Boehm, who described single-layer carbon foils in 1962. Graphene is a hexagonal lattice of carbon atoms that spread to form a single sheet in 2 dimensions, there is no limit to the size that graphene sheets can become. Graphene is the constituent material of several forms of carbon materials including graphite, carbon nanotubes, and fullerenes. The existence of graphene has been well know for a long time with TEM images of multi-layer graphene structures being taken as early as the 1940's. However, it was not until the discovery of a simple method for isolating single layers of graphene was discovered in 2004 that research into this material began in earnest.
Initial work on graphene showed that it had properties that vastly exceeded those of the bulk graphite that it was taken from. Properties such as the strength showed that a single layer of the material was over 200 times stronger than steel; the mobility of both holes and electrons were comparable to that of bulk metals such as copper; the thermal conductivity is so high as to be considered ballistic without impedance from the material itself; and single layers have a high opacity with over 2% of light at the near infrared being absorbed.
All of these unique properties mean that graphene could find use in a wide variety of applications including electrochemical capacitor devices, anti-corrosion coatings, composite materials, transparent conducting films, thermal pastes, as well as sensing and biosensing applications.