As graphene technologies progress to commercialization and large-scale manufacturing, issues of material and processing safety will need to be more seriously considered. The single word “graphene” actually represents a family of related materials with large variations in number of layers, surface area, lateral dimensions, stiffness, and surface chemistry. Many of these materials have aerodynamic diameters below 5 μm and can potentially be inhaled into the human lung. Graphene materials show several unique modes of interaction with biological molecules, tissues, and cells. The limited literature suggests that graphene materials can be either benign or harmful and that the biological response varies according to a material’s physicochemical properties and biologically effective dose. The present article reviews the current literature on the graphene–biological interface with an emphasis on the mechanisms and fundamental biological responses relevant to material safety and also to potential biomedical applications

In this article, I describe my early interest in graphene and contributions that I and my co-authors, in particular, have made to the field, along with a brief history of the experimental discovery of graphene. I then turn to new carbon materials whose experimental syntheses might be on the horizon. One example involves using graphene as a template to generate large-area ultrathin sp3-bonded carbon sheets that could also be substitutionally doped with, for example, nitrogen atoms, as one approach to making materials of interest for quantum computing. Such large-area sp3-bonded carbon sheets hold tremendous promise for use in thermal management; as a new material for electronics and photonics; and as ultrahigh-strength components in various structures including those used in aerospace, among other applications. Another example is the class of negative-curvature carbons (NCCs) that have atom-thick walls and carbon atoms trivalently bonded to other carbon atoms. Such NCCs have a nanoscale pore structure, atom-thick walls, and exceptionally high specific surface areas, and they fill three-dimensional space in ways that suggest their use as electrode materials for ultracapacitors and batteries, as adsorbents, as support material for catalysts, and for other applications.