...AND CHEAPER...:

Caltech's David Boyd has done what scientists have been struggling to do for years: He says he's figured out a cheap, easy way to make graphene, and to make a lot of it. The kicker? He's using technology from the 1960s.

Graphene was a wonder material first theorized in 1947 and not actually proven in the real world until years later, when scientists did it in the strangest of ways in 2003: by rubbing a pencil across some Scotch tape. Made of sheets of carbon just one atom thick, the stuff is tough, durable, and conductible. It's the perfect material for not only super-conductors but also in all kinds of lightweight, high-strength futuristic materials. -solar panels, medical diagnostic devices, fuel cell extractors - ideas even as far-future as a tether for a space elevator. [...]

Boyd, a researcher in the Physics, Mathematics & Astronomy division at Caltech, says his method can burn at half the temperature and produce graphene with up to twice the quality of the second method. Oh, and do it all in five minutes. 

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