Humanity naturally strives to create the most efficient, practical and useful things it can create. We want the thinnest smartphones, mass storage of things like books and music, the fastest and smallest cars at the same time, and we want to read books at incredible speeds. We are constantly improving ourselves and the world around us so we can get things done faster and easier. In short, we seek the greatest efficiency in the smallest amount of time or space possible. While we're achieving this goal of efficiency in a small space in things like smartphones and cars like the smart car, we're only scratching the surface of what's to come. We have yet to harness the true potential of this unique substance which is literally the thinnest material, as well as being the best conductor of heat and electricity in the world. This material is known as graphene, and it's a material with an interesting history, an interesting structure, and an interesting future. Graphene is an allotrope of carbon. An allotrope is a “different form of the same element with different bonding arrangements between the atoms.”1 Other allotropes of carbon include common substances such as coal, graphite, and diamond. Diamond is an allotrope in which each atom is bonded to four other atoms, making it one of the strongest materials in the world. Graphite is an allotrope where “each atom is bonded to three others in layers of hexagonal (six-sided) shapes that resemble chicken wire”2, which allows the layers to slide easily over each other, resulting in birth to the soft material which we are even able to write on paper. Graphene, however, is an allotrope in which “...... middle of paper...... technology. Graphene, due to its electrical conductivity, could be used in smartphone screens. These smartphone screens would be so flexible and thin that you could fold them like a piece of paper and put them in your pocket without anything breaking. These are just a few of the many possibilities of graphene.11 Overall, graphene is truly a unique layer of infinite possibilities. In the next twenty years, we will be surrounded by graphene-based products. Graphene will power our buildings, it will be in our smartphones, it will be in our pockets, and it will be in our bodies and in the bodies around us in bionic devices. However, before any of these amazing things can happen, we need to find a way to harness the true power of this material and mass produce it on a global scale. Because the first step to changing the world with this material is to take it out of the laboratory and into the streets...