The National Graphene Institute (NGI) is located on Booth Street East, part of the University’s Main Campus. Completed in 2015, the NGI is a formidable building designed to focus on collaboration between The University of Manchester and its partners to promote and perform multi-disciplinary research into practical applications for Graphene and other 2D materials.

Groups of technicians were guided on our tour of the five storey facility by John Whittaker, Head of Operations for the NGI.
Firstly, we were shown the impressive cleanroom facilities features – located over two floors, the NGI homes 1,500m2 of clean room space – all class 100 or class 1000 cleanrooms. It is the largest academic space of its kind in the world dedicated to graphene research.

On the tour, we got to see technicians at work in full cleanroom regalia, as well as many state of the art instruments.

After the cleanroom floors, we visited a research & production floor which housed various labs; through one of these was a “quiet room” designed to be free from all vibration, used to analyse graphene interactions. Finally, we visited a printing lab on another floor. John told us that the research being done at the NGI is into practical applications such as longer-life batteries, thin-layer display screens and faster processors, as well as many other applications for the future.