How can a pencil mark on paper contain tiny amounts of graphene?
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graphene
Atomic force microscopy image of water structures that were trapped beneath a sheet of graphene one atom thick.
Every time you use a pencil to draw or write on paper, you are inadvertently creating graphene.
This occurs because the "lead" in a pencil is composed of graphite, a three-dimensional crystal structure made of many weakly coupled layers of graphene. When you drag the pencil across the paper, the friction causes these layers to exfoliate or peel away from the graphite core. As a result, the physical trace left behind on the paper contains a small fraction of both single-layer and multilayer graphene flakes.1