Graphene, the hottest new material in electronics, is remarkably simple: a flat sheet of pure carbon rings—just one atom thick—that resembles chicken wire. But this unassuming structure has caught the attention of researchers at laboratories in the United Kingdom, Texas, and Georgia and even at IBM. They are studying graphene for a wide range of applications, from computer chips to communication devices to touch screens. It might even put a fresh spark into the electrical grid.

Consisting of a single layer of graphite, graphene is an allotrope of carbon that has been studied for decades. It did not seem technologically important, however, until scientists began looking at potential replacements for silicon in electronics. In 2004 physicists at the University of Manchester in England demonstrated a simple way to produce graphene—peeling off layers of graphite, a method known as mechanical exfoliation—spurring an explosion of research.

Graphene has several very appealing traits. Electrons meet much less resistance from graphene than they do from silicon, traveling through it more than 100 times as easily. And because graphene is essentially a two-dimensional material, building smaller devices with it and controlling the flow of electricity within them are easier than with three-dimensional alternatives like silicon transistors.

In a blown-up image from a scanning tunneling microscope, it looks just like an endless sheet of chicken wire: a simple flat sheet made up of a lattice of hexagons. But this nanoscopic material called graphene, first generally acknowledged to exist just five years ago, turns out to have a variety of unique, and potentially very useful, characteristics -- ones several researchers are actively trying to better understand and turn into real-world applications.

Graphene, a form of the element carbon that is just a single atom thick, had been identified as a theoretical possibility as early as 1947. Even as Institute Professor Mildred Dresselhaus, her physicist husband Gene, and others were working in the 1960s with multiple layers of graphene, many scientists were saying that such an ultra-thin sheet of matter could never be found or even made. It was very controversial; there were many people who were skeptical.

Now that it has been found, with widely publicized results published in 2004 by researchers. They are focusing on how to harness its properties, and trying to find ways to produce it in sufficient quantity for extensive research and eventually for commercial applications.

Its unique electrical characteristics could make graphene the successor to silicon in a whole new generation of microchips, surmounting basic physical constraints limiting the further development of ever-smaller, ever-faster silicon chips.

Graphene could also substitute for copper to make the electrical connections between computer chips and other electronic devices, providing much lower resistance and thus generating less heat. And it also has potential uses in quantum-based electronic devices that could enable a new generation of computation and processing.

The mobility of electrons in graphene -- a measure of how easily electrons can flow within it -- is by far the highest of any known material. So is its strength, which is, pound for pound, 200 times that of steel. Yet like its cousin diamond, it is a remarkably simple material, composed of nothing but carbon atoms arranged in a simple, regular pattern.