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Unzipping Nanotubes Makes Superfast Electronics
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."
Hey, that's what an ex-girlfriend of mine called it: her nano-tube. Bitch. Oh, carbon nano-tubes.....gotta hit Cancel.
Oops, sorry, meant to post it to a different article!
Nanoribboned for her pleasure.
She did say you were pretty quick.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yes, but it isn't obvious that it is feasible to do that.
So now we have a method to bulk-produce graphene; but do we have a way to implement it in devices?
In any case, this is good. Nanowire diameter shouldn't be that hard to manipulate. The more you can manipulate something in synthesis for functional properties, the better it is for application. Look at doping silicon for example.
In any case, I wonder what the lifetime of a graphene-based device would be. Molecular compounds aren't always the most stable. That's one of the main reasons that they are being held back from adoption.
I have left slashdot and am now on Soylent News. FUCK YOU DICE.
I rtfa and I saw mention of nanoribbons, but nothing about nanoribbens. Obviously Al doesn't know what he's talking about since he's just making up new words on the fly.
"We shall grapple with the ineffable, and see if we may not eff it after all." - Douglas Adams
[mage] what should I give sister for unzipping?
[Kevyn] Um. Ten bucks?
[mage] no I mean like, WinZip?
-Bash.org
Good. Cheap. Fast. Pick Two.
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
Sounds like just what I need to tie up my nanopresent after wrapping it in nanopaper, covered with nanowhimisicaldecorations!
And available in nanosize for your anatomy!
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.
Other things that will come "in a few years":
- Stereo 3D in the home
- Personalized medicine
- The end of the economic crisis
- Flying cars
- Duke Nukem Forever