Safer, more efficient, and more sustainable: innovation in 2D materials that could impact our everyday devices

National Graphene Institute Research 19 September 2025

When Dr Andrey Kretinin first came to Manchester, he was inspired by pioneers like Sir Andre Geim and Sir Konstantin Novoselov, who sparked a global scientific revolution with their isolation of graphene. Many discoveries since then have produced a range of breathtaking possibilities, from water purification and desalination, to enhanced concrete that reduces C02. Yet the area of 2D-materials research that Dr Kretinin works in today, doesn’t just have the potential to change one application, but a whole range of real-world materials and devices.

In his early research Dr Kretinin had been interested in the physics of semiconductors nanostructures, and then had become involved in the development of the nanowire-based devices , yet after 2004’s graphene breakthrough, he saw an opportunity to use his previous expertise in the field of nanomaterials and nanofabrication. Looking for projects where he could have a tangible impact on the world around him, he moved to Manchester and began to focus on the role that graphene and other 2D materials could play in the thermal management of electronics.

Controlling heat flow and dissipating heat

Thermal management looks to ensure that devices in a system that are acting as electrical or thermal conductors, can operate efficiently and safely. Traditionally these materials have been rigid, expensive, difficult to source, and sometimes even toxic, but Dr Kretinin is engaged in developing electrically and thermally-conductive alternatives from graphene and other 2D materials. These alternatives could not only improve performance, but be more lightweight, flexible, and potentially even better for the environment.

Within his work, Dr Kretinin can expand the mechanical or functional properties of materials, beyond their original configuration, by introducing nanomaterials. This could involve, for example, adding flakes of graphene, carbon nanotubes, or small beads of ceramic, inside a larger polymer matrix, to quantum materials, solar cells, or transistors (all the transistors we have in our computers, are now based on nanoscale pieces of silicon).

It’s research that’s understandably of interest to organisations worldwide, and Dr Kretinin and his colleagues have recently worked with several industrial partners, to test whether adding graphene or other 2D materials could make a positive difference to the products they create.

The puzzle’s yet to be solved

Yet this is also a field in which many questions remain. Researchers have yet to fully understand, for example, how electric charges move through graphene laminates, particularly how they travel between individual graphite flakes.

Dr Kretinin’s current work focusses on this little-explored research area, and he and his colleagues have recently built a model to better understand what’s happening. Their efforts are producing a range of important insights, including furthering knowledge into how graphene’s electrical properties can be controlled. Through this work, the team hope to learn which parameters to tune to get better performing materials – and so better final products – in fields like thermal management and ‘printed electronics’ (the creation of electronic components or entire devices, using both organic and inorganic materials, with techniques like screen printing or ink-jet printing).

A positive impact for the environment

As part of this work, Dr Kretinin and his colleagues are also developing an exfoliation method for graphene production which they hope will be more sustainable – not only recycling a lot of chemicals used in the process, which would otherwise be wasted – but leading to better results than the production methods that currently exist.

Their hope is that this is just a small part of the broader role that the use of nanomaterials could play, in making our energy- and resource-hungry world more efficient and sustainable. It’s still a work in progress, but many scientists like Dr Kretinin are aiming for their research to be part of a quicker, more sustainable transition.

Research in the home of graphene

And he isn’t working alone, but in partnership with the largest graphene research and innovation community in academia, with more than 350 experts spanning a wide range of disciplines at the National Graphene Institute.

Dr Kretinin says that he enjoys the ‘synergic effect of working with brilliant people; physicists, chemists and materials scientists’, noting that at Manchester, he has access to ‘probably the best expertise in the world in graphene and 2D materials – it would be hard to find a better place to research in graphene’.

The University is also set-up well for Dr Kretinin’s work, providing ‘a dedicated institute, with all the infrastructure and instruments it’s possible to imagine.’

An exciting, graphene-led future

Twenty years after the isolation of graphene, Manchester remains a world leader in 2Dmaterials innovation.

Whilst Dr Kretinin notes that any dramatic applications of graphene may be some time in coming, and that technological difficulties remain in implementing the properties of 2D materials into everyday devices, graphene remains for him, ‘such a rich source of different possible phenomena’.

‘Slowly, steadily, we’re getting there,’ he says, ‘with new composites and new graphene films, and who knows what the other applications could be like in ten years – it’ll probably something novel around sensors – there’s a lot of development in that direction.’

Yet as Dr Kretinin’s research clearly demonstrates, in the process of studying the properties of graphene and other 2D materials, we’re already gaining the kind of novel fundamental knowledge that could positively impact a wide range of everyday devices, and that’s a hugely exciting prospect for our future.

Meet the researcher

Dr Andrey Kretinin is a Lecturer in Materials Physics at the University of Manchester, based at the National Graphene Institute. His research focuses on advanced materials, particularly two-dimensional (2D) materials like graphene, and their applications in electronics, thermal management, and sustainable technologies. With a background in semiconductor nanostructures and nanowire-based devices, Dr Kretinin has developed a strong interdisciplinary approach to materials engineering.