Tuning In to Graphene

In March of this year, a team at the Georgia Institute of Technology made headlines when it revealed plans for a new microscopic antenna built out of graphene, a synthetic form of carbon with remarkable conductive properties.

Early press coverage focused on the promise of speedier wireless connections, and with good reason: such an antenna could, in principle, allow for terabit-per-second transfer speeds—fast enough to download a high-definition movie in a fraction of a second. At distances of a few centimeters, download speeds could approach an astonishing 100 terabits per second—the equivalent of three months' worth of HD footage.