BANGALORE, INDIA: Graphene, said to be the thinnest material ever discovered, and which is believed to be a rival to silicon, is all set be produced industrially.

According to a Reuters video, graphene, which could replace silicon in electronics, conducts electricity and heat like no other material and since its discovery scientists have been looking for a way to industrialize its production.

Polish scientist Dr Wlodzimierz Strupinski of Institute of Electronics Materials Technology said that he has found an efficient and cost-effective method of harvesting the material, using commercially available equipment.

“Our method does not depend on the evaporating of silicon from the silicon carbide wafer, where, as a result the carbon stays on the surface, but it relies on the crystallization of this carbon from an outer source, which means the carbon is settled down in the form of a one or two atom thick layer on the surface,” he said.

Surprisingly powerful adhesion qualities

Meanwhile, according to a research conducted by Scott Bunch of the University of Colorado Boulder, this most exciting new material under study in the world of nanotechnology, has surprisingly powerful adhesion qualities.

The experiments showed that the extreme flexibility of graphene allows it to conform to the topography of even the smoothest substrates. And it is this quality that would assist the large-scale production of graphene as well as graphene-made mechanical instruments such as gas separation membranes and resonators, said scientists.

“The real excitement for me is the possibility of creating new applications that exploit the remarkable flexibility and adhesive characteristics of graphene and devising unique experiments that can teach us more about the nanoscale properties of this amazing material,” Bunch said.

Graphene consists of a single layer of carbon atoms chemically bonded in a hexagonal chicken wire lattice. Its unique atomic structure could some day replace silicon as the basis of electronic devices and integrated circuits because of its remarkable electrical, mechanical and thermal properties, said Bunch, who is the lead study author of this research.

The discovery of this one atom thick material, has completely changed material science and condensed-matter physics. Possible applications range from high speed, highly efficient processors to flexible touch-screens, said Stuart McDill of Reuters.

Graphene is almost completely transparent and yet also extremely dense.

While graphene is stronger than diamond, it is highly conductive, conducting both heat and electricity better than any other material, including copper. If scientists succeed in creating graphene transistors, that could become much faster than today's silicon ones and give rise to more efficient computers.

The experiments with graphene had won last year's Nobel prize to Russian-born scientists Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov.