RESEARCHERS IN DUBLIN have achieved a breakthrough in the production of ‘wonder material’ graphene.

Scientists at the AMBER, a materials science centre at Trinity College Dublin and funded by Science Foundation Ireland, have discovered a way to produce the material in industrial quantities.

The substance is one the strongest known with a section 1mm thick being 200 times stronger than steel and a superconductor of electricity more than 1000 times more effective than copper.

It’s also 97.3 per cent transparent and extremely bendable.

However, it is extremely difficult to produce.

These single-atom thick sheets of carbon made from graphite could potentially revolutionise many parts of our lives, from providing the next step in battery technology, biomedical sensors, water filtration, to even photovoltaic cells used in solar panels

Their findings are to be published in the Nature Materials publication, heralded as a ‘global breakthrough’.

“This shows how industry and academic collaboration can lead to research of the highest calibre, with real commercial applications,” Prof Jonathan Coleman from AMBER said.

Graphene has been identified as a life changing material and to be involved at this stage of development is a wonderful achievement

Minister for Research and Innovation Sean Sherlock praised the team’s work, saying producing graphene in mass quantities is “something that USA, China, Australia, UK, Germany and other leading nations have all been striving for and have not yet achieved”.

Thomas Swan Ltd have now signed a contract with AMBER to scale-up production.

The project was part of the Graphene Flagship, spanning 17 countries with 126 academics as well as industry partners working on a common goal, and was part of the €1 billion research project announced by the EU, of which Ireland received 1 per cent.

Graphene was discovered at Manchester University by Russian-born scientists Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov in 2004. They won a Nobel Prize in 2010 for their discovery, which involved a roll of Scotch tape and some graphite. One forecast predicts the graphene industry will be worth £300bn by 2022. The UK government has recognised its importance with £50m of funding for a research institute.

Scientists have outlined how they managed to make the "wonder material" graphene using a kitchen blender.

Graphene is thin, strong, flexible and electrically conductive, and has the potential to transform electronics as well as other technologies.

An Irish-UK team poured graphite powder (used in pencil leads) into a blender, then added water and dishwashing liquid, mixing at high speed.

The results are reported in the journal Nature Materials.

Because of its potential uses in industry, a number of researchers have been searching for ways to make defect-free graphene in large amounts.

The material comprises a one-atom-thick sheet of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb structure. Graphite - mixed with clay to produce the lead in pencils - is effectively made up of many layers of graphene stacked on top of one another.

Jonathan Coleman from Trinity College Dublin and colleagues tested out a variety of laboratory mixers as well as kitchen blenders as potential tools for manufacturing the wonder material.

They showed that the shearing force generated by a rapidly rotating tool in solution was sufficiently intense to separate the layers of graphene that make up graphite flakes without damaging their two-dimensional structure.

However, it's not advisable to try this at home. The precise amount of dishwashing fluid that's required is dependent on a number of different factors and the black solution containing graphene would need to be separated afterwards.

But the researchers said their work "provides a significant step" towards deploying graphene in a variety of commercial applications.

The scientists have been working with UK-based firm Thomas Swan to scale up the process, with the aim of building a pilot plant that could produce a kilo of graphene per day by the end of the year.

In addition to its potential uses in electronics, graphene might have applications in water treatment, oil spill clean-up and even in the production of thinner condoms.

In 2010, Manchester University researchers Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery of graphene. They published details of their advance in the academic journal Science in 2004.

They famously used sticky tape to peel off the layers of graphene from graphite.

Graphene can currently be grown atom-by-atom via a process called chemical vapour deposition. However, while this can produce metre-scale sheets of graphene, they also contain defects which can inhibit their properties.

Lol at kitchen blender