The method involves forming the strong, conductive material in a chamber consisting of two concentric tubes.

Graphene is a material with some serious potential. It's strong, highly conductive and could be used in solar panels, flexible light sources and more. Unfortunately, it's also rather difficult to fabricate, with most existing solutions unable to produce patches of the material large enough for widespread commercial uses.

A new technique pioneered by MIT researchers could make things significantly easier. It's similar to the existing chemical vapor deposition method, but makes use of a chamber consisting of two concentric tubes – one placed inside the other. The technique requires the chamber to be heated to around 1,000 °C (1,832 °F).

The substrate on which the graphene forms is wound around the inner tube, with gases flowing through the larger tube and out of a set of holes halfway along the inner tube. This allows the process to be split into two stages, with the first part of the chamber used to prepare the substrate, and the second used to grow the graphene upon it.