Grrrr, one of these days I’m going to get a post out of the door before Paul, and when that happens….
Anyways, as someone who loves new stuff, and especially WEIRD new stuff, there’s not too much out there that surprises me anymore. However, I do suspect that “graphite based wafers that are seemingly stronger than diamonds but also conduct electricity well with limitless potential” stands as the longest run-on sentence I will write here at PaulTech, much less some of the coolest news to come out of the world of materials I’ve heard in a while. See, “graphene“, as it’s called, wasn’t even known to exist until Andre Giem, professor of Physics at the University of Manchester, in the UK, pulled some graphene flakes off of a graphite crystal with some adhesive tape. Why no one thought of that sooner is beyond me, but I digress. Apparently, these graphene sheets are mere nanometers thick, yet very strong and very conductive, both things which would serve it, as a material, well.
Unfortunately (I say that word much too often with revolutionary things…) , it seems graphene can’t just be ripped from graphite crystals. The graphene molecules must be separated from the graphite itself; this requires the graphite to be oxidized so the sheets can separate easily. The process of separation occurs the easiest in water, so that is typically used. Once the flakes separate, they drift down to the bottom where the start to stack and overlap. The hydrogen atoms in H2O bond the flakes together, making wafer-thin sheets of graphene, ready to do some work.
Now Rodney Ruoff of Northwestern leads the charge to see if he can engineer and manufacture large quantities of this new material. “The chemistry is almost infinite.” he says. Good thing, too. Observers are excited by the progress Ruoff’s team has made: not only is it strong and flexible (both literally and figuratively), but it can also be made in larger quantities than a few little flakes or one sheet at a time. The success of this material will ultimately depend on how much can be made in what amount of time, but hopefully we’ll see maybe a circuit board or semiconductor made of this stuff out soon! Better yet, how about a case for an iPod…
Picture courtesy of: Technology Review; see the link to the main story here!
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