Question: What is the latest project you are working on and how is it useful?

Susan Skelton answered on 22 Nov 2013:

Thanks for the question, kayztar!

At the moment I am looking at a new nano-material, called graphene. Scientists are really excited about graphene – so much so, that researchers at Manchester University won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2010 for discovering graphene!

Graphene is made up of carbon – the same stuff that is in the lead of your pencil. But what is really cool about graphene is that it is made in a really thin sheet – so thin, in fact, that it is only a single atom thick! This is the thinnest any material could EVER be.

Graphene is so thin that you could stack 1 million sheets of graphene on top of each other, and the pile would still be thinner than a single piece of paper!

Compared to a metal wire, graphene has an interesting way of conducting electricity. Scientists think that graphene will be really useful in making the next generation of super-small and super fast computers and smart phones.

Graphene is also far stronger and lighter than any other material. Scientists want to use graphene to build a bridge all the way up into space! Imagine that…if we wanted to go to the moon, we wouldn’t need any fancy rockets, just climb into an elevator and off you go!

In my work, I am using light to try to understand more about how graphene works so that we can use graphene to try to make some of these exciting ideas science fact rather than science fiction!