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World's First Single-Atom-Thick Fabric
neutron_p writes "Researchers at The University of Manchester have made the world's first single-atom-thick fabric, which reveals the existence of a new class of materials and may lead to computers made from a single molecule. They call it graphene, because it's 'webbed' by extraction of individual planes of carbon atoms from graphite crystal. The nanofabric belongs to the family of fullerene molecules, which were discovered during the last two decades, but is the first two-dimensional fullerene."
Diffraction grating is what ?
"The nanofabric belongs to the family of fullerene molecules, which were discovered during the last two decades, but is the first two-dimensional fullerene." Two-Dimensional? Surely a molecule has at least three dimensions...
many posters seem to think that the irritation/allergy issue has only to do with chemical composition. You have to consider the mechanics as well. For example - sand size silicon is no problem - we walk beaches covered in the stuff, we have sand storms where the air is full of it, but we also have noses and lungs evolved to filter the stuff. When you get to micron sized particles, it can be the size as much as the composition that is relevant. See Link
Consider asbestos. Not a problem when incorporated in insulation. In fact you can touch it and eat it no problem. The problem is that asbestos tends to make the wrong size particles that can penetrate the lungs. So the physical size of the particle is more important than it's chemical composition.
Hope this is not too deep (in the lungs) for the non-allergy/chicken-little people to comprehend. What do you think coal miners get? Coal is carbon afterall. Two important pneumoconioses are coal worker's pneumoconiosis and silicosis.
I'm guessing that comes without a floppy drive. Or a USB port.
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
What experiance do we have with stuff smaller than dust? I would guess that before we had experience with asbetosis, or the coal miner's black-lung (carbon by the way) we might have ignored it as having no possible effect.
Opps - didn't read your last sentence - yes it may be a problem. Are we not scientists? Do we not believe in actual data?
Experimentalists of the world unite!
rich ones do
Well said.
This is the kind of attitude that stops technological progress. Hey, what if Foo Bar happens.
Let the technology flourish, let's see how it works. If there is going to be a problem, we'll find out soon enough. We're not going to die out that easily.
Nukes were supposed to kill us 50 years ago. Surprise! We still haven't managed to blow ourselves up. Ditto for any number of things.
If it's going to be allergic, then ways around it will be found. You will not find them by banning them, but rather by letting people experiment and find out.
I'm honestly sick and tired of this bullshit argument that something should be banned, because a bunch of whiners come up with a what if scenario.
Good response, AC. Would have added you as a friend had you not been AC.
simply existing in a universe filled with cosmic rays leads to carcinogenic effects.
if people stopped to consider risks, we'd still be living in caves and dying by the age of 20.
short term risks lead to long term security.
I'm beginning to think that nowadays every tech article has to include at least 1 really stupid claim, either so the authors can laugh at the stupid journos who pass them on uncritically, or because it's the bit the journalist will think he understands and that will make a headline.
Any kind of machinery requires differentiated structures, and anything involving electricity requires localised anisotropy - or how will you get your current flows separate in order to do anything useful? DNA has a differentiated structure but it is not a machine, it is a recording medium (parenthetically, it's just as well the RIAA wasn't around when life evolved: "What do you mean, you can replicate DNA? That's illegal file-sharing!") and the machines that do something useful with it are all multi-molecular. It's unlikely a few billion years (sorry, George) of evolution will be seriously wrong about this. I don't mind Slashdot contributors including marketoid claims in headers, but they might at least quarantine them in quotes and put a [sic] at the end so we know that they know what we know.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
Even the super-strong "monofilament" is only strong for its size. Wildly high estimations of tensile strength still only give a few pounds of force to break it.
Yeah, and we breathe oxygen too. So putting them together can't be harmful either, right?
I guess that's why carbon monoxide is so safe.
While you are probably right about it not being strong because there is only one layer it is much stronger than you think. When you tear a piece of paper of an other fabric you are not breaking atomic bonds you are separating fibers that are mushed or spun together.
A better comparison would be thinking about tearing a piece of aluminum foil. It is very hard to cause it to separate under tension and you have to add sheering forces to get a fracture to start.
Have you thought for yourself today?
The space elevator concept involves a ribbon of carbon nanotubes either bonded or woven together, so not quite as thin as a 1-atom sheet but pretty thin. Others are working on how to make long nanotubes for this purpose. The point of the Russian research seems to be the electrical properties. The article doesn't explain what they mean when they say the sheets are "strong." Probably strong considering it's only 1 atom thick, but not space elevator ribbon strong.