Graphene – a new material extracted from graphite, a two-dimensional sheet of carbon a single atom thick – is exciting many minds around the world. The fact it was first extracted by University of Manchester scientists Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov, a feat for which the pair won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics, is great news for the UK and the Manchester city-region, but is it enough to lead a Graphene-driven industrial revolution here?

Some have suggested that with the headstart offered by Geim and Novoselov’s achievement and the fact the new £61m National Graphene Institute will be located here, Manchester may be on the brink of becoming ‘Graphene valley’, the natural location for the commercialisation of all that knowledge and know-how.

Published in the journal Nature, the discovery could revolutionise fuel cells and other hydrogen-based technologies as they require a barrier that only allow protons – hydrogen atoms stripped off their electrons – to pass through.