A team of Cambridge scientists has cracked the production of "wonder" material, graphene.

This means that Cambridge University spin-off, Cambridge Nanosystems, is now set to become the leading supplier.

The team has worked out how to produce impurity-free graphene at high volumes and low cost.

Although long touted as a wonder material for the future, graphene has not been scalable - until now.

At the moment Cambridge Nanosystems, based in the city, has 14 people, but this number is set to double over the next 12 months when they open a factory.

The fledgling company has achieved what many global firms have been trying to crack for some time and successfully turned a greenhouse gas into pure graphene, in a single, very efficient step.

Using a ball of plasma, held in a steady state, they are able to 'crack' gases such as methane and produce, in a single process, very high quality graphene.

With a lab-scale production unit they are already producing graphene commercially, but the major challenge they faced was in scaling this up to an industrial level. The hot news is that they have now worked out how to do this and are constructing a plant in East Cambridge that will house their first full-scale production unit capable of producing large quantities of this very valuable material.

The scientists behind the breakthrough were initially drawn to the UK from Poland and Austria, because of the world-class research opportunities afforded by Cambridge University's Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy.

Dr Krzysztof Koziol, who co-founded Cambridge Nanosystems with Jerome Jouag, said: "We decided to stay in Cambridge to build this new company because of its unique start-up community.

"We received excellent support from conventional sources such as the entrepreneurial community, but also from the local council who helped us to locate a suitable site for our manufacturing facility.

"We look forward to building Cambridge Nanosystems into the world's leading supplier of ultra-high quality graphene, while bringing high-skilled jobs to the local area."

The company is set to move into its new production facility early next year. The move will enable them to increase graphene production tenfold.

Collaboration with global brands across a number of sectors is already in place to develop graphene into advanced designs.