Graphene that can be made in a kitchen blender is opening up a new world of printable electronic devices, according to Professor Jonathan Coleman, speaking after making a presentation at the TEDxBrussels conference on 1 December.

Graphene, a one-atom-thick form of carbon, is super strong and highly conductive. How did you end up making this wonder material in a kitchen blender?

‘We started off doing things with more complicated lab-scale scientific equipment. The kitchen blender only came along in the last couple of years. That’s often how it is, you have to really understand things at a very deep level, I think, before you can simplify them. So, we had to do things in a complicated way before we could understand things well enough to do them in a simple way.’