Science Graphene?

[Moach]

well i've been hearing today rumors of a breakthrough material which is told to have unobtainium-ish qualities...

i think it's called "graphene" or something... it seems to be something of a single layer of carbon atoms in a honeycomb pattern - which apparently is the toughest thing ever created :blink:


i googled it briefly and found this isn't all too new... it won the Nobel prize in '07, but from what i hear, (sometime this week, it appears) someone(s) has come up with a way to produce it at engeneering-ready scales :hail:


is that for real? - from what i've seen, it sounds like the stuff a G42 StarLiner would be made of :tiphat:



anyone care to clarify?

 

[RisingFury]

The Novel Physics Prize this year (yesterday) went to Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov for creating graphene.

Graphene is created from graphite. Graphite is layer upon layer of carbon-monolayers. A single layer of graphite is called graphene.

Novoselov and Geim created it by sticking a small bit of graphite to sticky tape and peeling off one layer. While chemically the stuff is nothing big, a lot was learned about Physics from it, including manufacture of very small transistor...


---------- Post added at 21:09 ---------- Previous post was at 21:08 ----------

Nobel Physics Prize list:
[ame="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_in_Physics"]List of Nobel laureates in Physics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]

 

[Jarvitä]

So this material will basically allow for smaller transistors than require less power and produce less excess heat than silicon ones. The Moore law will live on for quite a bit longer then.

 

[Moach]

oh man... just when i thought i had a good computer - nah this one is beggining to show signs of age by now... two cpu's suddenly don't seem all that much anymore :shifty:

i read somewhere this wans't good only for electronics, i was told this morning that NASA already has their eyes on some south-korean fellas who have managed to produce this probe-like substance in relevant amounts...

not quite sure tho... can't seem to find anything about that :huh: - perhaps my collegue got it wrong then?

 

[RisingFury]

I don't know much about material science so I'm speculating out of my field here, but generally pure carbon crystals form strong bonds. Combine that with the crystal structure that the atoms create and the general light weight of carbon and you get yourself a material that is pretty hardcore when it comes to strength, flexibility and weight.


As for 1 layer thick transistors... I'm not sure either. You have to start taking into account the quantum nature of matter, where on a small enough scale the electrons don't really *know* where they are anymore, which might create currents due to tunneling and crap like that. I heard somewhere that the thinnest transistor possible is 5 layers thick, to prevent that effect, but not sure if that's correct.

 

[dumbo2007]

There are Single Electron Transistors.....but they work only at very low temperatures.

 

[RisingFury]

There are Single Electron Transistors.....but they work only at very low temperatures.

Interesting, although I imagine impractical for a PC...

 

[Zachstar]

There are a number of showstopper issues that have to be resolved first before Graphene has even the slightest of chance of appearing as an X86 CPU.

And even then costs I heard are likely to be over 5 thousand USD per core because of the extra work that has to go into it.

Silicon will still be able to grow in power well into the 2020s. Even tho tunneling will keep the nm from getting smaller. They will then focus on removing the imperfections that slow down all cores. It will be alot slower but you have to realize many people have not even entered the 90nm era yet. Much less 32nm and none below that besides Intel and Some ARM testing.

For other applications however Graphene's potential seems almost limitless. There are some who want to call this year forward the "Graphene Age"

And dont forget the more recent discovery of Graphane which has some completely opposite properties that will have huge implications for future industries.

 

[tblaxland]

There are Single Electron Transistors.....but they work only at very low temperatures.

Any references? I had thought they were purely theoretical at this stage?

 

[HAL9001]

I hae some questones about it, too:


Is it right, that you can make 3-dimensional parts of it, or can it just be used as foil? Would that 3d-part be really 100 times harder AND 100 times more robust than the best steal? (That wassaid in the newspapers, etc. here in Germany) What would be the mass of 1 cm³ of solid hard Graphen?

And how good it is producable (easy enough to really use it commercial?)


thanks for answers in advance and greats,
HAL9001

 

[Moach]

Is it right, that you can make 3-dimensional parts of it, or can it just be used as foil? Would that 3d-part be really 100 times harder AND 100 times more robust than the best steal? (That wassaid in the newspapers, etc. here in Germany) What would be the mass of 1 cm³ of solid hard Graphen?

And how good it is producable (easy enough to really use it commercial?)

from what i gather, it seems it´s possible to use it as either 2D foil or a 3D structure which is harder than diamond (i read that upon it´s creation, it was found that it had cracked the diamond anvil they used to make it)

but yes, steel doesn't event compare, it appears :blink:

i too would like to know more on the mass and production-readyness of that thing, still....

 

[Ghostrider]

i too would like to know more on the mass and production-readyness of that thing, still....

Are you thinking "cool sword" as well?:thumbup:

 

[HAL9001]

I think:

Build a spaceship of it!


You could male a spaceship and spacesuits for land on venus of that.

 

[Urwumpe]

Build a spaceship of it!

I would be careful - carbon nanotubes, a similar kind of material, reacts explosively to simple UV radiation, at that scale, even small effects can have big resonances.

 

[jedidia]

from what i gather, it seems it´s possible to use it as either 2D foil or a 3D structure which is harder than diamond

It sounds pretty contradictory that it should be hard AND flexible at the same time. Those two attributes are mutually exclusive. If it is harder than diamond, then that means it will break into a thousand pieces if you throw a stone at it...

 

[Artlav]

No contradiction - it's a flat crystal, hard enough to withstand 4e6 Gs in it's plane, yet very flexible in Z axis.

Graphene is by definition a one-atom-thick layer of graphite, so you can't build anything strong out of it.

But, they say you can make transistors from it, or do all kinds of quantum magic.
Also, something about protective properties of that film.

 

[Wishbone]

Another thing with nanomaterials (tubes etc.) is that they are quite carcinogenic.

 

[HAL9001]

As the press in germany says, the foil will be 1 or 2 Atoms thick.

I don't think that that's really right, but would be a possibility.



and because the UV: than we just need a good UV-filter over it.

 

[Ghostrider]

As the press in germany says, the foil will be 1 or 2 Atoms thick.

Hmmm, monoatomic blade. We're talking Zantetsuken-like cutting feats here.

 

[HAL9001]

well SolidWorks said, that (if Graphene really is so cool as they say) that would be very havy and expensive, but it would be able to land on Venus, if it's built of Graphene: