A decade on how has the EU’s €1 billion gamble to get graphene on the market fared?

In 2013, nine years after Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov first isolated graphene using a piece of sticky tape and three years after they won the Nobel prize in physics for their discovery, a €1 billion (£870 million), 10-year project was launched to help push graphene to the forefront of European scientific research.

Funded by the European Commission and EU member states, the Graphene Flagship aimed to take graphene out of the laboratory and onto the market in the form of faster and more reliable optic and electronic devices, longer-lasting batteries and more environmentally-friendly construction materials.

Its anniversary provides an opportunity to reflect on the flagship and what it has achieved, although the full impact of the programme may not be felt for some time, says Jari Kinaret, who directed the flagship for ten years. ‘There are academic studies that look into the impact of publicly funded research initiatives, and they estimate that the impact can really only be measured 10 or 15 years after the project has ended,’ he says.