Graphene, or the lead in pencils, is on the verge of becoming the material that allows the unlimited production of pollution free energy from the air we breathe.

Researchers have discovered that a form of carbon graphene enables positively charged hydrogen atoms or protons to pass through it despite graphene being completely impermeable to all other gases, including hydrogen.

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Scientists say the implications of this breakthrough discovery are so huge it could massively increase the efficiency of hydrogen fuel cells that generate electricity directly from hydrogen.

The breakthrough makes generating power out of thin air completely possible. What this discovery presents is the prospect of extracting hydrogen fuel from air and using this fuel as a carbon-free power source in a fuel cell to produce electricity and water with no pollution.

"In the atmosphere there is a certain amount of hydrogen and this hydrogen will end up on the other side (of graphene) in a reservoir. Then you can use this hydrogen-collected reservoir to burn it in the same fuel cell and make electricity," said Professor Sir Andrei Geim of Manchester University.

Prof. Geim, a physicist, received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010 for his work on graphene.

Graphene is the thinnest known material. It's a million times thinner than a human hair but is over 200 times stronger than steel. It's also the world's best conductor of electricity.

The discovery graphene is permeable to protons overturns conventional wisdom. An international team of scientists led by Prof. Geim has discovered that graphene, which is one-atom thick, acts like a chemical filter. It permits the free passage of protons but is an impenetrable barrier to other atoms and molecules.

The team's scientific paper shows graphene and boron nitride (a similar single-atom material) allowed the build-up of protons on one side of a membrane but prevented all other particles from penetrating into a collecting chamber. The paper was published in the journal, Nature.

Researchers believe their discovery could open up a new source of clean energy. This breakthrough looks extremely promising as graphene can be produced into one square meter sheets for use in commercial fuel cells.

These fuel cells are often used in electric cars and derive their energy from converting oxygen and hydrogen into chemical and electric energy.

"There have been three or four scientific papers before about the theoretical predictions for how easy or how hard it would be for a proton to go through graphene and these calculations give numbers that take billions and billions of years for a proton to go through this same membrane," said Prof. Geim.

"It's just so dense an electronic field it just doesn't let anything through. But it's a question of numbers, no more than that. This makes a difference between billions of years and a reasonable time for permeation. There is no magic."

In 2004, Prof. Geim and Konstantin Novoselov found a way to isolate graphene by using sticky tape from a piece of graphite repeatedly until layers formed into a graphene  

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