One Billion Euros to be Invested in Graphene Research

Graphene is a material which has great hopes resting on it - especially in communications technology but also in the construction of very light, stable structures and batteries. The EU has now made research into this material one of its key scientific objectives, having declared the European graphene research project one of its two new "flagship projects". Europe is now set to make a one billion euro investment into a research project investigating graphene and its technological uses. Austria will also be contributing and TU Vienna's Thomas Müller, Austria's coordinator for the project, will draw on EU support to step up his research into graphene. Light in Computers - The new material, which is made up of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb lattice, has been considered a beacon of hope since at least 2010, when Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics following their experiments with graphene. Thomas Müller from TU Vienna's Institute of Photonics is researching the photoelectric effect in graphene. When light particles hit the material they can knock electrons out of place.