Graphene research wins Nobel Prize

Two University of Manchester, England scientists have been awarded this year's Nobel Prize in Physics for their work on graphene, widely seen as having the potential to replace silicon in electronics.

On Tuesday, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced that the 10m Swedish kronor ($1.49m) prize is going to Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov "for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene".

Graphene, a form of carbon, is an excellent conductor that takes the form of a two-dimensional honeycomb lattice of carbon atoms. As it performs better at component sizes below 10nm — about the point at which silicon becomes much harder to improve in the way that has driven Moore's Law for 50 years — it is regarded as key to the future of nanoelectronics.

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