Grahpene | A Nobel Prize Technology Leap (Energy & Capital)

Nobel Prize in Profits

Then there's graphene, which won the Nobel Prize in Physics last year.

Best described as an atomic-scale chicken wire made from one layer of carbon atoms, three million sheets of the stuff would be one millimeter thick.

Graphene is being hailed as a revolutionary building block for hi-tech electronics — everything from nanoribbons to transistors to circuits to solar panels.

And it's even believed it will help us overcome Moore's Law, or the idea that the number of transistors on a circuit (which control processing speed and memory capacity) can double every two years. This has indeed been the case since the circuit's creation in 1958, but is expected to stop in the next few years — unless new materials are discovered.

We've gone as far as we can go with silicon.

So it's a good thing MIT researchers have found a way to make graphene flakes into some of the most powerful transistors ever. Because of its chicken-wire form, Electronics Weeklyreports it is “possible to produce A-B stacked layers, with the atoms in one layer centered over the spaces between atoms in the next, that yields desirable electronic properties.”

MIT has also found a way to make graphene electrodes that can carry current to and from solar cells more efficiently than the indium-tin-oxide used at present.

Vinjay Gupta of India's National Physical Laboratory has done one better. He's developed nine-nanometer-thick quantum dots that can be used as electron acceptors in LEDs and flexible rolls of solar film.

The University of Texas thinks it can use the stuff to make an “active, dynamically tuned invisibility cloak.”

The obvious play here is GrafTech International (NYSE: GTI), one of the world's largest providers of advanced graphite and carbon materials for industry. It's well-positioned for the graphite boom, and many analysts are calling for surging long-term sales.

You may also want to check out Northern Graphite (TSX-V: NGC), which IPOed in April.

Proceeds of that IPO are being used to expand the company's Bisset Creek graphite mine, which it claims can produce 20,000 metric tons of graphite per year.

It's a good bet. Graphite prices have doubled in recent history in conjunction with rising demand for industrial minerals like lithium and rare earths.

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