The search to make a perfect condom

One promising idea for stronger condoms uses graphene – an ultrathin single layer of carbon atoms that was first identified by Nobel Prize winning scientists at the University of Manchester, UK, in 2004. Aravind Vijayaraghavan, a materials scientist at the National Graphene Institute at the University of Manchester, believes "the world's thinnest, lightest, strongest and best heat conductive material" could be ideal to improve the properties of condoms. His team was given a grant by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2013 as part of a campaign to develop innovative condom designs. But graphene cannot be made into any standalone objects on its own, so Vijayaraghavan's team are combining graphene with both latex and polyurethane. "Graphene is a nano-scale material, which is just one atom thick and few micrometres wide," he says. "But at that small scale, it is the strongest material on the planet. The challenge is to transfer that strength from nano-scale to macro-scale, at which we use real world objects. We do this by combining the strong graphene particles with a weak polymer, like natural rubber latex or polyurethane. The graphene then imparts its strength to the weak polymer to make it stronger by reinforcing it at the nano-scale."