Lifeboat Foundation

Graphene cooking oil?

In Brief

• Researchers have discovered a way to make soybean oil into the super-strong material graphene. The material has a wide variety of potential uses and can revolutionize electronics.
• The material could be used to make cell phone batteries last 25 percent longer, make more effective solar cells, and even filter fuel out of air.

Researchers have found a way to turn cheap, everyday cooking oil into the wonder material graphene – a technique that could greatly reduce the cost of making the much-touted nanomaterial.

Graphene is a single sheet of carbon atoms with incredible properties – it’s 200 times stronger than steel, harder than diamond, and incredibly flexible. Under certain conditions, it can even be turned into a superconductor that carries electricity with zero resistance.