Graphene: The Nano-sized Material With A Massive Future

[Jozi]

 

(CNN) -- Ever since it was discovered in 2004, graphene has been hailed as a natural wonder of the materials world destined to transform our lives in the 21st century.

 

Graphene's amazing properties excite and confound in equal measure. How can something one million times thinner than a human hair be 300 times stronger than steel and 1,000 times more conductive than silicon?

 

CNN Labs asked the head of MIT's graphene research department, Tomas Palacios, to explain why graphene is such a special material and what we can expect it to do for us in the future.

 

 

 

 

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/04/29/tech/graphene-miracle-material/index.html?hpt=te_r1

[carolkarine]

great. but we aren't seeing it practically used yet, are we?

[Ahmed dz]

 

Supercapacitors: They'll enable you to charge your cell phone in 5 seconds, or an electric car in about a minute. They're cheap, biodegradable, never wear out and as Trace'll tell you, could be powering your life sooner than you'd think.

[FireFox]

I so can't wait to see what they do this is amazing material

 

We are all living in a very interesting and exciting (apart from the unemployment) time

[Nicktrance]

This sounds awesome, but wouldn't charging that quick mean you'd have to use very high voltages to avoid breaking a device due to high current?

 

The quick charging coupled with the much greater amount of cycles it can take before degrading sounds like it might finally make electric cars desirable to me, even if battery life (in one cycle) is short since I only use my car for short distances. Although the fact that there is almost no renewable energy where I live completely defeats the economical and environmental friendly purpose, the fact that it is cleaner to dispose of means it's no worse than cars running on fossil fuels (as is the case with most electric/hybrid cars), but you get the increase of torque vs petrol engine on low revs :).

[Beskamir]

you have NO IDEA how much i want graphene!!!! so many useful things that it can be used for.... and maybe if i could 3D print with graphene i would be capable of making some real mithril:D

[bradscoolio]

Little science experiment for you guys.

• scribble on a piece of paper really hard with a graphite pencil so it makes a solid dark grey colour and make sure you do it in a 1cm thick line with a length of 5cm+ (make sure you press really hard and make is really dark and solid, there'll be some graphite powder residue)
• get a piece of scotch tape and stick it along the thick line you just drew
• take off the tape and look at the adhesive side, you've just made a 1 atom thick layer graphene
• use the graphene side of the tape in line with some wires and a battery to make a circuit to power something, eg: a light bulb.

Tadaahh! This was how they discovered graphene and this is a use case i can see becoming a thing: Traces on PCB's, they can be extremely small and still transmit data at super speeds :)

[Night]

It just sounds cool aswell. I vote yes to graphine.

[IPCharger]

So first flexible OLED displays and now this thing which is also flexible... I can see the flexible phones coming!

[Lukiose]

 

Supercapacitors: They'll enable you to charge your cell phone in 5 seconds, or an electric car in about a minute. They're cheap, biodegradable, never wear out and as Trace'll tell you, could be powering your life sooner than you'd think.

Yep, supercapacitors are amazing stuff, the at-the-moment being designed in China straddle bus will utilise this technology.

[FireFox]

Little science experiment for you guys.

• scribble on a piece of paper really hard with a graphite pencil so it makes a solid dark grey colour and make sure you do it in a 1cm thick line with a length of 5cm+ (make sure you press really hard and make is really dark and solid, there'll be some graphite powder residue)
• get a piece of scotch tape and stick it along the thick line you just drew
• take off the tape and look at the adhesive side, you've just made a 1 atom thick layer graphene
• use the graphene side of the tape in line with some wires and a battery to make a circuit to power something, eg: a light bulb.

Tadaahh! This was how they discovered graphene and this is a use case i can see becoming a thing: Traces on PCB's, they can be extremely small and still transmit data at super speeds :)

 

We did that as a science experiment in school apart from making a circuit out of it, still pretty cool though

[Borgodoc]

.

[bradscoolio]

We did that as a science experiment in school apart from making a circuit out of it, still pretty cool though

 

Isn't carbon wonderful?

[bradscoolio]

Question that immediatly pops up in my mind: how much graphene is there?

 

Graphene is a product of Graphite which is a common form of Carbon used mostly in pencils. Interesting fact about carbon: it's the 4th most abundant element in the universe and it has an entire branch of chemistry devoted to it called organic chemistry. I don't think we'll be running out of it any time soon xD

[FireFox]

So widely available (sort of) and we have only recently discovered graphene

[Borgodoc]

.

[bradscoolio]

In that case, very interesting indeed. Didn't know it was a form of carbon. Of course, being widely abundant in the universe doesn't always mean being abundant on earth (just take a look at helium, for example).

 

Carbon is the most abundant element in the earths crust. Google my friend, she knows everything :P nahh, it's just simple high school chemistry xD

[Glenwing]

Graphene is a one atom thick layer of carbon, arranged in a hex-lattice.  Interesting stuff.  It's self-healing too, meaning if there is a graphene sheet with holes in it and it is bombarded by carbon atoms, they naturally fall into place in a hex-structure and fill in the hole.  Cool stuff.  It's shows great promise in integrated circuits and people are working on their compatibility with CMOS and digital information.

[Borgodoc]

.

[the_devil52]

Graphene is a one atom thick layer of carbon, arranged in a hex-lattice.  Interesting stuff.  It's self-healing two, meaning if there is a graphene sheet with holes in it and it is bombarded by carbon atoms, they naturally fall into place in a hex-structure and fill in the hole.  Cool stuff.  It's shows great promise in integrated circuits and people are working on their compatibility with CMOS and digital information.

 

So It's basically a load of benzene rings (without the hydrogen) stuck together?

[bradscoolio]

So It's basically a load of benzene rings (without the hydrogen) stuck together?

 

Exactly!

[dgtL]

Ive been watching this tech since its announcement and i just cant wait to see consumer products based on it.

[Glenwing]

Hehe, I knew that. Just saying it isn't always the case :P

 

Anyone have any idea when we'll start seeing practical applications appear on the consumer market?

The manufacturing/mass production facilities aren't there yet.  Plus since it's only 1-atom thick that limits its applications.  Despite comparisons to its strength against steel we won't be making armor or casing out of it, it's not designed for large applications like that.  It might be useful as a reinforcing layer for displays, allowing even thinner screens and reducing glare (I've heard).  Most of its promise lies in its electrical properties though.

[Ahmed dz]

Yeah , still if only they make it avaible for battery applications that would already revolutionize many aspects of our daily lives

The manufacturing/mass production facilities aren't there yet.  Plus since it's only 1-atom thick that limits its applications.  Despite comparisons to its strength against steel we won't be making armor or casing out of it, it's not designed for large applications like that.  It might be useful as a reinforcing layer for displays, allowing even thinner screens and reducing glare (I've heard).  Most of its promise lies in its electrical properties though.

[Glenwing]

Conductivity doesn't mean it will make a good battery, it doesn't have much to do with it actually.  Batteries in principle operate on a chemical reaction; you essentially have 2 materials and cause a chemical reaction to create energy; rechargeable batteries are ones where you can undo the chemical reaction and separate the two materials back out again.  That's why so many batteries have two parts to their name (Nickel Metal-Hydride batteries, Zinc-Air batteries, Lithium-Ion, Lithium-Sulfur, Lead-Acid... etc.)

 

There are a few things that matter when it comes to batteries.  Capacity (per weight and size), how fast it can discharge, how long it sustains a charge, and how many recharge cycles it can withstand, since you can never restore a battery 100% to its original state and get every molecule back in place, all batteries eventually degrade.  And of course their are safety/environmental considerations too.  Capacitors can store a lot of energy and charge/discharge very quickly, but they also lose their charge very fast.  DRAM operates on capacitors, that's why when you shut off power to your computer all information in the RAM is lost, capacitors hold electricity but it drains out in a split second, it can't hold onto a charge like batteries can.

 

Lithium-Ion batteries are currently the best balance of all these things; they have very good capacity compared to their predecessors (about 250Wh/kg) and have adequate charging/discharging capabilities for our purposes, and they withstand up to about 10,000 charge cycles (varies on the quality of the battery).  The cylindrical ones can explode if you puncture them but that's why we came out with the Lithium-Polymer battery, which is flat.  Most laptops use these.  Although their charge cycle durability is somewhat inferior to regular Lithium-Ion batteries.

 

Lithium-Sulphur batteries looks to be promising; they can store about 500Wh/kg, twice as much as Lithium Ion in the same weight, but because the sulphur tends to break down in the reaction it has very low recharging durability.  Early prototypes had about 30 cycles, now they have been improved to about 1000-1500 cycles.  And they are pretty benign as far as safety is concerned.  Although graphene has played a role in the development of Li-S batteries, using carbon nanotubes (a sheet a graphene rolled into a cylinder, basically) to help keep the Sulphur from breaking down...

 

Anyway, that's why you have to wary though when you read news about "new battery technologies", they will often give impressive numbers like it holds 10x as much as conventional batteries, or it can charge extremely quickly... These are good but they are useless unless the technology does ALL these things well and can recharge with very little capacity loss, and retain its charge over time... etc.