Next-Generation Condoms Will Be Made of Graphene

Since the initial isolation of wonder material graphene, the world has been waiting to see what singularly revolutionary invention the super-thin, tough, and conductive form of crystalline carbon might bring. Now it looks like we have our answer: next-gen condoms.

Oh sure, we’ve heard of graphene’s potential in things like data storage devices, chemical sensors, and teeny-tiny transistors; we’ve even seen a graphene piano. But lets face it, those kind of applications aren’t that relevant to most people’s day to day life. Not like a new and improved condom. As Aravind Vijayaraghavan, who’s leading the work at the University of Manchester, delicately phrased it in an announcement, “If this project is successful, we might have a use for graphene which will literally touch our everyday life in the most intimate way.”

The graphene condom was one of 11 contraceptive projects to receive $100,000 from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, as part of their Grand Challenges Explorations grants. Earlier this year, they challenged people to submit ideas to “improve uptake and regular use of male and female condoms by developing new condoms that significantly preserve or enhance pleasure and by developing better packaging or designs that are easier to properly use.”

Essentially, the task was to make a condom that people would actually want to use, and cut down on the old excuses like, “It just doesn’t feel the same,” “They always break anyway,” and “It ruins the moment.” As the Foundation put it:

The primary drawback from the male perspective is that condoms decrease pleasure as compared to no condom, creating a trade-off that many men find unacceptable, particularly given that the decisions about use must be made just prior to intercourse. Is it possible to develop a product without this stigma, or better, one that is felt to enhance pleasure?

The condom proposed by Vijayraghavan’s team is made of a composite of graphene and an elastic polymer (like latex, which most regular condoms are made of). The nanomaterials researcher explained that the inclusion of graphene would make a condom “thinner, stronger, more stretchy, safer and, perhaps most importantly, more pleasurable.”

Graphene’s thinness (it’s actually 2D) could help give a more natural sensation, and its toughness could prevent them from breaking. There was no mention as to how its super-conductive qualities might come into play.

Other projects that received grants included condoms made of different materials, such as polyethylene plastic, polyurethane, and, in one case, cow tendons. Sexy.

And some had novel ideas about application and use: A condom from researchers at the University of Oregon would seal around the penis with heat, making for a snug fit as things quite literally heated up, while the California Family Health Council proposed a kind of “wrapping” condom that “clings to surfaces rather than squeezes.”

Hey, anything that gets people into safe sex and science is a big winner in my book.