Researchers have found a way to turn cheap, everyday cooking oil into the wonder material graphene - a technique that could greatly reduce the cost of making the much-touted nanomaterial.

Graphene is a single sheet of carbon atoms with incredible properties - it's 200 times stronger than steel, harder than diamond, and incredibly flexible. Under certain conditions, it can even be turned into a superconductor that carries electricity with zero resistance.

That means the material has the potential to make better electronics, more effective solar cells, and could even be used in medicine.

Last year, a study suggested that graphene could help mobile phone batteries last 25 percent longer, and the material has the potential to filter fuel out of thin air.