MIT has just announced it is working with a substance called graphene to find new information technology and energy related applications.

For those of you without a post-grad science degree, graphene is a sheet of carbon atoms formed into perfect hexagonal patterns. Graphene has several other properties that identify it as a material with extraordinary potential. For instance, it was found to have a breaking strength 200 times that of steel.

It is also one of the most expensive materials ever produced. A ’sheet’ of  graphene the width of a human hair current costs almost $1000 to produce. This is the part of the story that got Warm Home Cool Planet’s attention, however:

“Unique electrical characteristics could make graphene the successor to silicon in a whole new generation of microchips, surmounting basic physical constraints limiting the further development of ever-smaller, ever-faster silicon chips…  that’s only one of the material’s potential applications. Because of its single-atom thickness, pure graphene is transparent, and can be used to make transparent electrodes for light-based applications such as light-emitting diodes (LEDs) or improved solar cells.”

If something invisible to the human eye can be used to make, store and transport energy, the possibilities for alternative energy generation would seem to be limitless. Now, if we could just do something about the price.