The first thing visitors to Paragraf’s lab, in the Cambridgeshire village of Somersham, are shown is a thin disc made of synthetic sapphire with a piece of graphene taped on to it. This was the first graphene product the company made, and it quickly evolved to a small wafer of 64 tiny graphene devices arranged in a grid. These days, the company produces six-inch wafers that hold 9,000 chips.
Graphene, a 2D form of carbon, with the atoms arranged in a hexagonal structure, is mainly used to strengthen concrete and paints, but is now being touted as a replacement for silicon in semiconductors. China has started using it to get ahead in the global microchip wars.
The UK needs to do all it can to avoid losing out to China and the US in the race to crack the technology, says Simon Thomas. He founded Paragraf in 2017 with Prof Sir Colin Humphreys and technical director Ivor Guiney, who all worked together at Cambridge University, as a university spinout.
Graphene, hailed as a “super material”, is extracted from graphite, the crystalline form of carbon used to make pencils, and comes as a latticed sheet just one atom thick. Thomas believes it will “fundamentally change the world”, altering the way everything from mobile phones and computers to electric cars, healthcare and military equipment is manufactured.
Smartphones made using the material could be worn on your wrist, and graphene tablets could be rolled up like a newspaper, according to the University of Manchester, where, in 2004, graphene was first produced.
Thomas, wearing a blue suit with matching shoes and a flowered shirt, says: “Graphene and other 2D materials will change the status quo to provide technologies we have never ever seen before, and performance levels we have never ever seen before. In electronics it will have a huge effect on reducing energy consumption and creating faster semiconductors.”
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