Graphene has been touted as a “material of everything”, but for all its promise it does have some drawbacks, especially in its poor dispersibility and instability in water (and many common solvents); this limits any applications. Current techniques such as chemical vapour deposition (CVD) and mechanical exfoliation do produce high quality graphene films. However, these methods are not suitable for bulk material applications. A low-cost process to generate graphene by exfoliating graphite layers utilizing surfactant may result in readily-dispersed graphene that can find applications in polymer composites. For this proposal, a new range of surfactants have been systematically synthesised with the aims to explore how to design surfactants which can efficiently stabilize graphene so that it can be effectively applied for nanocomposite applications.