02/04/2016 Click - Short Edition

In a moment it is Newswatch, but first on BBC News, Click.

As amazing as our devices are today, as fast as they run, and as

small as they get, they are all limited by physics. They are limited

by the substances that they are made from.

We dream of devices that are flexible, wearable, see-through and,

But before we can invent them, we need a substance that can do all

those things, be all of those things.

Well, fortunately, such a substance exists.

Theorised for decades but only finally created in a lab

in 2010, by these guys, Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, it was

such an amazing feat that it won them the Nobel Prize in Physics.

Right, here is how you win a Nobel Prize.

Take one pencil, and some sticky tape, and you see that?

Now, on there, somewhere, are flecks of graphite from a pencil.

These are known as graphene, and they will change the world.

Graphene is a single atomic layer of carbon.

They are just one atomic layer, and yet they have all kinds

So if you have a flawless piece of graphene,

electrons can move ballistically without being scattered around.

And electrons move as if they have no masses, so it's relativistic.

The mobility can be hundreds or thousands

And also, because it's one atomic layer, it's transparent.

So if you can imagine, you have a sheet with transparent electronics.

Transparent electronics make all sorts of things possible.

Suddenly anything can become a display, without blocking

Solar cells can become a lot more efficient if you put the electron

collecting circuitry right on top, without blocking the sunlight.

And graphene is not only transparent and flexible,

Atom for atom, 207 times stronger than steel.

Meet professional cyclist Yanto Barker.

Today, his bike is sporting a new set of

And that means he can tackle terrain he would normally steer well clear

of, like broken glass or, inexplicably,

These tyres made by bike giants Victoria are made

from special rubber, that contain specks of graphene, to improve their

strength dramatically, and without the extra weight normally carried

You have to imagine that a tyre is always full

You want the grip, but you want the mileage as well.

You want a low rolling resistance and weight, but you also want

Because graphene is able to make a tyre lighter,

less rolling resistance, at the same time more mileage

and more grip, that was impossible with the existing compounds so far.

The rims are made of carbon fibre that is also infused with graphene,

which turns out as well to be very good at dissipating heat caused

And it is this ability to bind graphene to other substances,

improving those materials in the process,

that has sparked a lot of interest from scientists around the world.

And you can do all sorts of things with graphene.

And what you do with it partly depends on what material you

deposit on top of the graphene.

And while graphene is only one atom thick, the materials you put on top

So to do that, you need precision instruments

in a super-duper clean room like this.

At the UK's Graphene Institute in Manchester, researchers are

exploring all sorts of applications for this wonderful material.

It is being used as a waterproof coating to make

This graphene mesh is already capable

of sieving out many impurities, but the ultimate goal is to come up

with a graphene membrane that can turn the seawater into drinking

water, in about the same amount

Right, so graphene is amazing, at everything.

So why isn't it already in everything?

Why is it so far only really being mixed in

Well, because we can't yet make it in both big enough sizes and higher

You can grow larger samples of graphene on copper sheet,

but because of the really high temperatures

involved, the graphene is deformed and not very good quality.

If only there was a way of growing large graphene sheets on copper,

Across the pond, at the California Institute of Technology,

We found out, by an accident, that we had some leaky valves.

I thought I had hydrogen plasma, it turns out that it was leaking

in just a small amount of methane.

This isn't a very good vacuum system.

That led to a world changing discovery.

Do not maintain your equipment, just let it go to pot.

Hydrogen plasma is only supposed to clean the copper while making

graphene at temperatures of 1,000 degrees Celsius.

Let's try to have plasma-assisted growth, and so we lowered

the growth temperature from 1,000 to 800, and then my group members found

And then we say, OK, let's lower the temperature further, the

And then, can we turn off the heater, and just grow the sample

with plasma assistance at room temperatures?

And we discover that this graphene has very few defects in it,

which means it has very good electrical properties.

Graphene is inching ever closer to a fulfilling its promise as this

And in fact, even now, scientists are working

on other substances, themselves just one atom thick, which also promised

The world, it seems to me, is getting very two-dimensional.

As we consume more content on the go, our choice of headphones

So I have been testing some of the latest, more interesting options.

These are the Earin earbuds, a pair of totally wireless headphones.

Now, whilst they are in this container, not only are they being

kept clean, but they are also being charged.

As long as you've charged up the case, it can power them up three

Now, once you have introduced them to your phone via Bluetooth,

the left one will automatically sync up once it has been taken out of

the case, and then the right earbud will connect to the left earbud, and

I have no complaints about the sound quality or

the connection, but I do feel slightly conscious that they could

fall out of my ears, which makes me feel comfortable walking, but

Taking the idea of wireless headphones to another

level are these, the Dash, a pair of smart headphones that are definitely

They can track activities, including swimming,

as stream music from your phone, or play tracks stored on them.

While the touches and swipes to operate are intuitive

to use, at some points I found that even on top volume the music didn't

But the time I really felt the benefit of these headphones was

when I was walking and making phone calls on the go,

because the person on the other end, even though the microphone was

in here, couldn't tell that I wasn't holding my phone handset.

They do offer the option of sound transparency being

on or off, so you can hear your surroundings if you choose.

And for those it is a priority for, so cyclists,

or people who run on busy streets, the latest in phone conduction

The sound travels through vibrations on your cheekbones, rather than

I was actually really impressed by the sound quality,

and I've never felt so safe pounding the streets of London.

But after a little while, I did start to feel that the vibrations on

I think that may be because I've made the volume so high.

For something that looks a bit different,

If you move your head a lot, you may actually want them to be

The Tone Platinum can receive high-res audio, has dual noise

cancelling microphones built in, and some added voice control

But the design seems to be a matter of taste.

I think these are more about sound quality than something

you should run with, especially by the way they feel on my neck, so for

that reason I'm going to take a seat...

Don't forget you can still immerse yourself

in Click's own virtual reality programme filmed entirely in 360 in

Switzerland and the UK, and you'll find it on Click's YouTube channel.