A team from the National University of Singapore won a prestigious award - and a $500,000 research grant - on Monday for discovering a way to make ultra thin sheets of black carbon that are just 1/1000 the width of a human hair.

Invisible from the side, the one atom-thick sheets can be used to coat anything from glass to plastic.

The discovery has been hailed as breakthrough because the sheets - which are made from graphite, the same material found in pencil lead - could eventually be used as high tech plastic electronics, officials said.

The discovery earned Assistant Professor Peter Ho and his team the 13-man team from NUS the prestigious Temasek Young Investigator Award on Monday.

Established in 2001 by NUS and the Defence Science and Technology Agency, the prize is a $500,000 three-year research grant.

According to Prof Ho, who is also director of NUS' Organic Nano Device Laboratory, the project was a gamble from the beginning.

Little research had been done before on the subject.

'We had no idea if it would be a waste of time,' said the 37-year-old. 'I was a bit worried, but we did well in the end.'

Read the full story in Tuesday's edition of The Straits Times.