Potential applications of graphene

Potential graphene applications include lightweight, thin, and flexible electric/photonics circuits, solar cells, and various medical, chemical and industrial processes enhanced or enabled by the use of new graphene materials. In 2008, graphene produced by exfoliation was one of the most expensive materials on Earth, with a sample the area of a cross section of a human hair costing more than $1,000 as of April 2008 (about$100,000,000/cm2). Since then, exfoliation procedures have been scaled up, and now companies sell graphene in large quantities. The price of epitaxial graphene on silicon carbide is dominated by the substrate price, which was approximately $100/cm2 as of 2009. There is now a new method of making graphene out of gum trees that can lower the cost to up to$0.50 per gram as of 2019. Hong and his team in South Korea pioneered the synthesis of large-scale graphene films using chemical vapour deposition (CVD) on thin nickel layers, which triggered research on practical applications, with wafer sizes up to reported. By 2017, graphene electronics were being manufactured in a commercial fab on a 200 mm line. In 2013, the European Union made a €1 billion grant to be used for research into potential graphene applications. In 2013 the Graphene Flagship consortium formed, including Chalmers University of Technology and seven other European universities and research centers, along with Nokia. Researchers in 2011 discovered the ability of graphene to accelerate the osteogenic differentiation of human mesenchymal stem cells without the use of biochemical inducers. In 2015 researchers used graphene to create biosensors with epitaxial graphene on silicon carbide. The sensors bind to 8-hydroxydeoxyguanosine (8-OHdG) and is capable of selective binding with antibodies. The presence of 8-OHdG in blood, urine and saliva is commonly associated with DNA damage. Elevated levels of 8-OHdG have been linked to increased risk of several cancers. By the next year, a commercial version of a graphene biosensor was being used by biology researchers as a protein binding sensor platform.