GRAPHENE-CA To Make Way For €1,000 Million Graphene Flagship Initiative

Graphene, since its discovery has remained a material of great curiosity. Its properties and applications are unique. That is the reason why to get a better understanding of this material for its unique properties is on a top priority these days. Recently GRAPHENE-CA has announced a ten year plan for research in Graphene related fields and its properties.

#-Link-Snipped-#GRAPHENE-CA is considering to start a flagship named 'Graphene-driven revolutions in ICT and beyond'. A EUR-1,000-million project will bring 130 research groups from 21 European countries together under one roof for research purpose. This initiative action plan will be submitted to European commission in the year 2012 and is expected to be launched by 2013. Currently there are nine partners coordinating with each other in this issue for purposes related to research and networking activities of Graphene. They are the Universities of Manchester, Lancaster and Cambridge in the United Kingdom, the Catalan Institute of Nanotechnology in Spain, Gesellschaft für Angewandte Mikro- und Optoelektronik mbH (AMO GmbH) in Germany, the European Science Foundation, the Italian National Research Council, the Nokia Corporation, and coordinator Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden.

Graphene is considered to be a material of future. It is actually derived from Graphite which one of the allotropes of Carbon.  It was in 2004 when Konstantin Novoselov and Andre Geim, physicists from University of Manchester discovered Graphene. Both of these scientists were awarded Nobel Prize for physics for “Groundbreaking experiments regarding the two dimensional material Graphene” in the year 2010. The advisory council would include Graphene theoretician Francisco Guinea (CSIC, Spain), Albert Fert (THALES) and Klaus von Klitzing (Max-Planck Institute), the leading, also Luigi Colombo (Texas Instruments, USA) and Byung Hee Hong (SKK University, Korea) apart from Novoselov and Geim.

Recently, a few days back on May 4 a GRAPHENE flagship conference took place at world trade center and in Budapest congress. A thorough research will reveal many applications of this newly discovered material. Graphene is a single layered i.e. a two dimensional carbon crystal arranged in a hexagon with a carbon atom at every node. Even until its discovery it was widely believed that such a structure is impossible to exist, let alone unstable. But that is where Science makes all non-believers believe. This material is actually stronger than even Diamond. It is also a very good conductor of electricity. Recently scientists from University of Technology, Sydney made a #-Link-Snipped-#.

For its astounding properties, its application will be many and varied. Because of its strength, light weight and electrical properties, it will have huge potential in aircrafts, Super capacitors for batteries, biological sensors or Biosensors etc. Apart from everything, it is also very easy to make and it is commercially feasible too. Graphene layer is extracted from graphite using a process of “micromechanical cleavage”. It involves peeling of a very thin layer from graphite, these flakes are then oxidized in an aqueous solution and once more it is added to an Oxygen based chemical group.

So everything mentioned above explains importance about research on Graphene. Paving way to this flagship would mean paving way to a new era in material sciences, won’t it?

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