Graphene
The theory of graphene was first explored by Wallace in 1947 as a starting point for understanding the electronic properties of 3D graphite. The emergent massless Dirac equation was first pointed out by Semenoff, DiVincenzo and Mele. The earliest TEM images of few-layer graphite were published by Ruess and Vogt in 1948. An early, detailed study on few-layer graphite dates to 1962 when Boehm and colleagues reported producing monolayer flakes of reduced graphene oxide. Efforts to make thin films of graphite by mechanical exfoliation started in 1990, but nothing thinner than 50 to 100 layers was produced before 2004. Initial attempts to make atomically thin graphitic films employed exfoliation techniques similar to the drawing method. Multilayer samples down to 10 nm in thickness were obtained.
Graphene Research Centre
NUS established the GRC in 2010, under the leadership of Prof. Antonio H. Castro Neto, with a start-up fund from NUS of S$40 Million, 1,000 m2 of laboratory space, and a state-of-the-art clean room facility of 800 m2. Speaking of commercial application today scientists are using graphene for making synthetic blood and developing non-invasive treatments for cancer. Graphene would soon replace silicon in your computer chips thus resulting in a much faster, unbreakable tablets, phone and others; GRC is also participating on a S$50 Million CREATE grant from NRF, together with University of California, Berkeley and Nanyang Technological University, for the study of new photovoltaic systems based on two-dimensional crystals. In June 2012, the GRC announced the opening of a S$15 Million micro and nano fabrication facility to produce graphene products.