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Unzipping Nanotubes Makes Superfast Electronics

Posted by samzenpus on from the greased-lightning dept.

Al writes "Two research groups have found a way to unzip carbon nanotubes to create nanoribbons of graphene — a material that has shown great promise for use as nanoscale transistors, but which has proven difficult to manufacture previously. A team led by James Tour, a professor of chemistry and computer science at Rice University, and another led by Hongjie Dai, a professor of chemistry at Stanford University, both figured out ways to slice carbon nanotubes open to create the nanoribbons. The Stanford team was funded by Intel, and the Rice group is in talks with several companies about commercializing their approach."

5 of 64 comments (clear)

  1. Nanoscale and cosmic rays by microbox · · Score: 3, Interesting

    a material that has shown great promise for use as nanoscale transistors

    Won't a stray cosmic ray cause my cpu to fall over?

    --

    Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
  2. ok, so now what by Goldsmith · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Both these groups have succeeded where many others have tried and failed (even with very similar ideas). It's great work. As the summary suggested though, they've taken one hard to work with material and using a complicated process, made an even harder to work with material. This is great for doing science, as graphene ribbons are a huge pain to make, and this should open up more labs to investigating their properties.

    If we're going to have graphene consumer electronics though, it's going to be based on the wafer-scale CVD manufacturing process developed in Korea and MIT.

    1. Re:ok, so now what by vsage3 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      If we're going to have graphene consumer electronics though, it's going to be based on the wafer-scale CVD manufacturing process developed in Korea and MIT.

      Trust me, CVD synthesis of graphene is in the earliest of early stages. The problem is that neither group (Korea nor MIT) have figured out how to get the graphene off the nickel layer that catalyzes the reaction. There are other ways of making graphene that are much further along, such as epitaxial growth on silicon carbide.

    2. Re:ok, so now what by Goldsmith · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The big benefit of the CVD method is that it's actually easy to remove from the growth wafer. Nickel is easy to dissolve. The first papers on CVD graphene did this and demonstrated pretty good transistors. No one has made ribbons from it yet, but I'm working on that.

  3. *yawn* by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Posting anonymously for obvious reasons

    I work in the graphene area, and I think this is bullshit. First, graphene nanoribbons created using this method do not address the fundamental issues that accompany using carbon nanotubes such as targeted orientation or chirality concerns. This is a clear case of missing the forest for the trees. Second, Dai is known for some rather unbelievable studies.