Nokia Corporation (ADR) (NYSE:NOK) (BIT:NOK1V) (HEL:NOK1V) is set to test grapheme, which is believed to be the World’s hardest material, even harder than Diamond. According to Nokia, it received $1.35 billion grant from the European Union to perform research and development on the super material over the next 10 years.
“Nokia is proud to be involved with this project, and we have deep roots in the field — we first started working with graphene already in 2006,” Nokia’s CTO Henry Tirri said in a statement. “Since then, we have come to identify multiple areas where this material can be applied in modern computing environments. We’ve done some very promising work so far, but I believe the greatest innovations have yet to be discovered.”
Graphene is not only the hardest substance in the world but also 300 times stronger than steel. Graphene has several other types of special qualities like it is the thinnest object ever obtained by man. It is just one atom thick and also the lightest. Graphene is made of a 2D crystal and looks similar to scotch tape, but is infinitely thinner. It is transparent, bendable and a much better conductor than copper.
Nokia Corporation (NYSE:NOK) (BIT:NOK1V) (HEL:NOK1V), on succeeding in development of the material, will be able to build cell phones that would be superbly light, durable, and less prone to overheating.
“When we talk about graphene, we’ve reached a tipping point. We’re now looking at the beginning of a graphene revolution,” Jani Kivioja, a research leader at Nokia Research Center, said in the statement. “Before this point in time, we figured out a way to manufacture cheap iron that led to the Industrial Revolution. Then there was silicon. Now it’s time for graphene.”
Tapani Ryhanen who heads the sensor and material technologies Laboratory at Nokia Corporation (NYSE:NOK), explained that the company has been making extraordinary efforts to strike a collaboration between European Academia and industry. According to Ryhanen, they have now all the useful ingredients together to be successful. The new two-dimensional materials will positively affect the value chain in several ways and will create opportunities for new products and services and economic growth.
Tapani also warned that consumers shouldn’t expect everything to be made out of grapheme, but the research is carried forward to improve the existing material and products in order to further enhance their quality.
In the recent weeks grapheme has hogged much of the limelight, especially in the U.K. but Nokia Corporation (NYSE:NOK) (BIT:NOK1V) (HEL:NOK1V) has been conducting research on nanotechnologies since 2006, mostly from the Nokia Research Centre in Cambridge, U.K., and also with teams in Finland and Russia.
