Manhattan ? A faculty member at Kansas State University is conducting research he hopes could lead to improved electronics and optoelectronics.

Vikas Berry is an assistant professor of chemical engineering. Kansas State says Berry has received a five-year, $400,000 National Science Foundation award to study a new process to produce something called graphene quantum dots.

Graphene is a recently discovered form of carbon that is only one atom thick. It’s the strongest and thinnest material known to mankind.

Other researchers have been able to make quantum dots. But the school says Berry’s research team is the first to make quantum dots with a controlled structure in large quantities. He says that may allow these optically active quantum dots to be used in solar-cell applications.