Wednesday, 25 May 2011

Graphene - The New Wonder Material

Graphene is being hailed by the scientific community as the new miracle material that could replace silicon.

It is said to be 200 times stronger than structural steel and can be completely digitised. It can be stiffened or be completely flexible. It is seen as giving technology companies a potentially world-changing, clean slate to create new products.

One professor commented that an iPhone made of Graphene could be rolled up and tucked behind the users ear like a pencil!

So what is Graphene?
  • Graphene is taken from graphite, which is made up of weakly bonded layers of carbon
  • Graphene is composed of carbon atoms arranged in tightly bound hexagons just one atom thick
  • Three million sheets of graphene on top of each other would be 1mm thick
  • The band structure of graphite was first theorised and calculated by PR Wallace in 1947, though for it to exist in the real world was thought impossible
  • Due to the timing of this discovery, some conspiracy theorists have linked it to materials at the Roswell "crash site"
  • In 2004, teams including Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov demonstrated that single layers could be isolated, resulting in the award of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2010
  • It is a good thermal and electric conductor and can be used to develop semiconductor circuits and computer parts. Experiments have shown it to be incredibly strong
This article is based on information here http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/9491789.stm

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