Graphene's long list of achievements is a little longer today, as researchers from Rice University have used the material to make a bacterial bug zapper. A form of the material called laser-induced graphene (LIG) has previously been found to be antibacterial, and now the team has found that those properties can be kicked up a notch by adding a few volts of electricity.

The Rice team, headed up by Professor James Tour, first created LIG in 2014 by using a laser beam to etch patterns into a sheet of polyimide. That churns up the material into a porous graphene foam, which has been found to be effective at preventing microbes from building up on its surface.

"This form of graphene is extremely resistant to biofilm formation, which has promise for places like water-treatment plants, oil-drilling operations, hospitals and ocean applications like underwater pipes that are sensitive to fouling," says Tour. "The antibacterial qualities when electricity is applied is a great additional benefit."

To further test LIG's bacteria-blasting abilities, the researchers took a sheet of polyimide and used a laser to turn half of the surface into LIG. The material was then placed in a solution full of Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteria, and a small charge was run through the LIG electrodes. At 1.1 volts, the bacteria, which had been fluorescently tagged so the researchers could see them clearly, were attracted to the LIG anode and moved towards it, like a bug zapper.