The essence of graphene is a two-dimensional material with a thickness of only one carbon atom. Its carbon atoms form a honeycomb lattice with sp² hybrid orbitals. This structure makes its theoretical specific surface area as high as 2,630 ㎡/g, equivalent to the area of a standard tennis court condensed in 1 gram of material. When Novoselov’s team first obtained single-layer graphene using the tape peeling method in 2004, they measured the electron mobility to exceed 15,000 cm²/V·s, which was more than 100 times that of silicon materials. This extraordinary property enables its peak thermal conductivity to reach 5300W/m·K, approximately ten times that of copper, while its density is only 1.06mg/cm³, equivalent to 46% of that of aluminum metal. Just like a quantum web woven with a single layer of atoms, it can conduct current with a transparency of 99.7%, and its resistance value can be as low as 30Ω/□.
In terms of mechanical properties, the Young’s modulus of graphene is approximately 1TPa, and its intrinsic strength reaches 130 gpa, which is equivalent to suspending a 10-ton weight with a graphene filament of a cross-sectional area of 1mm². In 2018, experiments conducted by Columbia University showed that its tensile strength was 200 times that of structural steel, and the fracture strain reached 25%. When this material is added to the polymer at a weight ratio of 0.1%, the hardness of the composite material can be increased by 80%. For instance, the Airbus A350 passenger aircraft has been testing graphene-reinforced epoxy resin in its wings, which has reduced the weight of the components by 30% while extending their fatigue life by three times. This strength-to-weight ratio increases the payload of the spacecraft by 15%, just like injecting an invisible skeleton constructed with carbon atoms into the aircraft.
In terms of electronic properties, the Dirac cone band structure of graphene enables its carrier concentration to reach 10¹³cm⁻². At room temperature, the quantum Hall effect still exists in a weak magnetic field of 0.1T. The 100GHz graphene transistor developed by Samsung has a switching speed 50 times that of silicon-based devices and a power consumption reduction of 90%. In 2023, the MIT team developed a terahertz detector with a response frequency of 1.5THz, enhancing the resolution of medical imaging to the 10μm level. The graphene transparent electrode applied in the flexible display screen still has a resistance change rate of less than 2% after 100,000 bending tests. This is precisely the core value of what is graphene in disruptive innovation.
During the industrialization process, the production cost of single-layer graphene has dropped from $3,000 per gram in 2010 to $1 in 2024. The chemical vapor deposition method can grow a 30-inch continuous film on copper foil at 900°C, with the defect density controlled at less than 0.1 per micrometer. The Huawei Mate60 series mobile phones use graphene heat dissipation film to reduce the temperature difference of the chip by 8° C. Xiaomi’s 120W fast charging technology uses graphene to increase the thermal conductivity to 2000W/m·K. Although the current global production capacity has reached 5,000 tons per year, the growth rate of high-quality single-crystal graphene is still limited to 1cm² per minute, which hinders its application breakthroughs in the field of quantum computer chips.