EU Invests $1.35 Billion To Find Practical Applications For Graphene
Graphene NokiaThe untapped potential of the 'world's strongest material' may not remain untapped for long. Laboratories receive research grants all the time, but not quite like this one: a consortium of companies and research labs (phone giant Nokia is carrying the flag for the electronics researchers in this group) has received a $1.35 billion (emphasis: that's a billion with a "b") grant from future technologies wing of the European Union to develop graphene for practical applications. That is, a bunch of European researchers just received a billion euros to develop the strongest material in the world. Though not a new material by any means, graphene has yet to really come into its moment. The term "graphene" was around going back to the 1980s, and the material existed in the lab in some forms at least a decade before that, but it wasn't until the mid-2000s that researchers really started to manipulate...