Question: what is the most unique material you have studied

Anna Kalorkoti answered on 16 Nov 2019:

That would probably be graphene. It’s a layer of carbon a little bit like graphite (that’s the stuff pencil leads are made of), but only a single atom thick. Now in materials, structure is often just as important as what chemicals the material’s made from, and the single-layer structure of graphene gives it some really interesting properties. It’s incredibly strong, good at conducting electricity, and stretchy enough that we could use it to make flexible electronics–imagine a phone that folds up like a piece of paper! It’s also a fairly new material: science first discovered it in the 1960s, but it’s only this century that we’ve managed to make & study it on its own (rather than sat on top of another material). So we’re still learning about it and figuring out how we can best use it, but the possibilities are very exciting.