It seemed like any normal day on that fateful day in 2004. In fact, to many around the world, it was nothing but a typical day. The sun could have been shining, and the clouds could have been crying. People shuffled along the roads as always, dressed and carrying their briefcases on their way to work. He was no exception. Just like them, a man named Andre Geim woke up that day, got dressed, and got ready for work. 

What was abnormal about that day was the unprecedented discovery that would later win Andre Geim the prestigious 2010 Nobel Prize award in Physics. He, accompanied by his colleague Konstantin Novoslov, applied graphite onto a perfectly ordinary sticky tape, the type you could buy from any convenience store. They stuck sticky tapes with each other, encasing the graphite, and then peeled the tapes apart. After repeating this process multiple times, to both their astonishment and delight, graphene, a single layer in the structure of graphite, was produced. This seemingly unremarkable action performed by Geim and Novoslov demonstrated that graphene, a unique material approximating two dimensions, is producible. 

The scientific community viewed its peculiar property of having an atom-thin structure, which was deemed unstable, as one that provided boundless potential for future scientific developments. In recognition of this, Geim’s discovery of graphene was quickly followed by other two-dimensional materials along with their possible applications. It further posed new challenges to condensed matter theories, providing a novel perspective in the Physics field. In other words, along with Geim’s discovery came the revolutionary birth of the field of two-dimensional materials, a whole new realm ready for Physicists to explore.

Since then, other techniques utilised for graphene production have been created. Even so, Geim’s classic technique of sticky tape mechanical exfoliation remains a key technique still used to this day, especially in laboratories requiring high-quality graphene. In our case, Geim’s methods have become the very basis of our project. 

After all, manually exfoliating graphite to produce graphene using sticky tape is, in actual fact, a laborious process, with low yields. Our group has taken this into account, with the vision of a machine automating this process, allowing for efficient processing of graphene for further study purposes. 

Thus marks the formation of the Graph Team, consisting — from left to right in the picture below — Danish (Chemical and Biological Engineering), Rui Qing (Mathematical Sciences), Yuxuan (Physics and Applied Physics), and Rosie (Environmental Earth Systems Science).

Thereafter we set forth, our vision clear in our mind’s eye. This blog on which you, dear reader, is reading. This very blog shall document our journey as young engineers, tackling these tasks in the hope of aiding graphene research, a field in which we firmly believe in the potential of.