GRAPHENE'S SUPERSTRENGTH

Big technology comes in tiny packages. New cell phones, music players and personal computers get smaller every year, which means these electronics require even smaller components on the inside. Engineers are looking for creative ways to build these components, and they’ve turned their eyes to graphene, a superthin material that could change the future of electronics.

Graphene isn’t just small, it’s “the thinnest possible material in this world,” says Kostya Novoselov, a scientist who studies graphene at the University of Manchester, in the United Kingdom. He calls it a “wonder material.” It’s so thin that you would need to stack about 25,000 sheets just to make a pile as thick as a piece of ordinary white paper. If you were to hold a sheet of graphene in your fingers, you'd have no idea because you wouldn't be able to see it.

In addition to being nearly invisible, graphene is also superstrong. In July, engineers at Columbia University in New York City showed that graphene is 200 times stronger than steel, making it the strongest known substance on the planet. Move over, Superman!

Graphene is made of carbon, one of the most abundant elements in the universe. Every known kind of life contains carbon; so do diamonds and coal. Graphene is a sheet of carbon, but only one atom thick. (An atom is the smallest possible piece of an element. If you change an atom of carbon, then it’s not carbon anymore.) You don’t have to look far to find graphene — it’s all around you. You can even try to find some right now.