How long will India play the catch-up game in science?

Graphene, the world's thinnest and toughest material, could spur the development of next generation computer chips, besides revolutionising materials science.

Its amazing properties open the way to bendable touch screen phones and computers, lighter aircraft, paper thin HD TV sets and lightning-quick net connections, and more.

Nobel Prize winning

Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov, both professors at the University of Manchester, discovered graphene, demonstrating its remarkable properties in 2004, which won them the Nobel Prize for Physics.

Now the Manchester team has demonstrated for the first time how graphene inside electronic circuits will probably look like in the future, the journalNature Physics reports.

By sandwiching two sheets of graphene with another two-dimensional material, boron nitrate, the team created the graphene ‘Big Mac' — a four-layered structure which could replace silicon chip in computers, according to a Manchester statement.

Leonid Ponomarenko, from Manchester, who led the study, said: “Creating the multilayer structure has allowed us to isolate graphene from negative influence of the environment and control graphene's electronic properties in a way it was impossible before.”

Andre Geim said: “Graphene encapsulated within boron nitride offers the best and most advanced platform for future graphene electronics. It solves several nasty issues about graphene's stability and quality that were hanging for long time as dark clouds over the future road for graphene electronics.

Within several months

“It could be only a matter of several months before we encapsulate graphene transistors with characteristics better than previously demonstrated.” — IANS