Nokia Receives $1.35B Grant To Develop Graphene Tech

silverpig writes "It now appears that graphene has reached a point worthy of serious, direct industrial attention. The grant money itself comes from the European Union for the Future and Emerging Technologies (FET), but the work will be done by a large non-governmental company with eyes on developing useful real-world applications. Smartphones contain many components with high potential for making use of graphene. From the article: 'Nokia is leading the electronic firms within the Graphene Flagship Consortium, which includes 73 other companies and academic institutions from a number of mediums. The Finnish handset manufacturer has received a grant of $1.35 billion to research and develop graphene for practical applications, with the European Union for the Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) providing the grant itself.'"

This Could Be Promising

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Both the tech that comes from it, and the funding process model if it is successful. I wonder how much Nokia is going to try to solo this project vs. working with other science entities. This has the potential of showing the world either how to, or how not to, do research. It's too bad that the US and the EU can't work together in a more efficient way to develop material sciences. How much tech is being held up by the slow advances in materials development? Batteries, solar, next-gen computing, ect, ect, ect. At least someone is starting to push hard into this.