A sixteen year-old boy from Lancaster, England developed a composite material that he created from a pencil and sunscreen lotion, that can break down pollutants when exposed to UV light. He suggests using it as a "self-cleaning" coating.
The boy (Samuel Burrow) did some experiments and entered into Google's Science Fair 2014 competition and was eventually chosen as one of the 18 finalists. The grand prize in this competition is a $50,000 scholarship, a trip to the Galapagos islands and more
Samuel's basic idea is to isolate the titanium dioxide from the sunscreen lotion and mix it with graphene oxide (that he extracted from a pencil). He says that the graphene prohibit electron-hole recombination in the TiO2. He says that this could also be used to filter heavy metals from liquids or purify water.
