In 2004, Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov at the University of Manchester in England achieved a breakthrough when they isolated graphene for the first time. A flat form of carbon made up of a single layer of atoms, graphene is the thinnest known material—and one of the strongest. Hailed as a wonder material, it won Geim and Novoselov a Nobel Prize in physics in 2010.
Twenty years later, graphene is finally making its way into batteries, sensors, semiconductors, air conditioners, and even headphones. And now, it’s being tested on people’s brains.
This morning, surgeons at the University of Manchester temporarily placed a thin, Scotch-tape-like implant made of graphene on the patient’s cortex—the outermost layer of the brain. Made by Spanish company InBrain Neuroelectronics, the technology is a type of brain-computer interface, a device that collects and decodes brain…
