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Breakthrough Grows Graphene On Silicon Substrate
eldavojohn writes "A new paper entitled Epitaxial Graphene on Silicon toward Graphene-Silicon Fusion Electronics published by a group of physicists at Tohoku University in Japan has demonstrated that they can grow graphene on a silicon substrate and pair that technique with conventional lithography to create a graphene-on-silicon field effect transistor. For quite sometime we've been discussing the supermaterial graphene being used like silicon improving everything from memory density to transistors. Given this demonstration, are we witnessing the start of a new era in electronics or are there more hurdles to clear before the manufacturers adopt this fabrication process and embrace graphene?"
"Breakthrough Grows Graphene On Silicon Substrate"? I'm calling everyone I know with the news. In fact, I'm writing my congressman to demand a new three day holiday: "National Graphene On Silicon Substrate Day".
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The real breakthrough in computing will be computers that can replicate themselves.
Wonderful. Then we won't just have other humans competing for resources, but the damned robots as well! I can see it now, a new twist on the "war against the humans" theme, not because robots decided we were inherently evil and can't be trusted - but in order to ensure their access to resources.
But of course we humans ARE devious and crafty. I can't wait for one robot to announce: Alumino-Lent Green is made out of Robots!
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
This isn't a huge breakthrough. First, their dirac peaks, while graphene-like, look horrible. This means the quality of graphene they are dealing with is very low. In fact, they don't thermally decompose all of the SiC, so they're still not much different than the SiC decomposition method. Something like this method holds much more promise. CVD growth of graphene on a copper substrate and subsequent rapid etching of the copper yields HUGE 30+" sheets of single to tri-layer graphene films.
Q. "Given this demonstration, are we witnessing the start of a new era in electronics or are there more hurdles to clear before the manufacturers adopt this fabrication process and embrace graphene?"
A. Yes.
Why are these two things considered by the submitter to be mutually exclusive?? It is both a potential new era of electronics AND there is the potential that there are hurdles to clear. What's the purpose of trying to editorialize a press release?
I mean isn't graphene basically unrolled carbon nano-tubes? And aren't carbon nano-tubes supposed to be very very (tensile) strong, strong enough to be considered to be usable as the raw material for a practical space elevator?
If (as another poster claims) 30+" sheets of the stuff can be made, could this stuff (even if slightly impure and not good enough for nano-electronics) be very useful for ultra-lightweight armor, fuel tanks (for a single stage to orbit vehicle), bikeframes... even a space elevator? Or is the fact that it is only a 2D mesh of carbon atoms (as opposed to a 3D "lattice" like diamond) make it substantially weaker?
I read somewhere that a layer of graphene a single atom thick is able to hold back 1 atm. of pressure. Isn't that roughly equivalent to a tissue paper holding back the ocean at some very deep depth (I know this is very imprecise! :)
Oh hey, 2006 called, and they want their science back.
This field moves *fast* and the epitaxial technique is already being commercialized by IBM (perhaps others too, but IBM isn't hiding it). It's already moving out of science and into manufacturing (for what purpose, I'm not sure anyone knows). Meanwhile, cheaper and larger scale methods to grow graphene have been invented, and are nearly perfected.
What the hell is a pencil?
Or at least I thought I did, (for some reason I thought 1 atmosphere = 32ft. water :)
What I meant to say is that think of the relative strength of a mesh A SINGLE ATOM THICK (sorry for the caps, I don't know how to do italics) being able to hold back the incredible number of molecular impacts one atmosphere of pressure implies. If you layered this mesh to be much much thicker so that it actually was macroscopic in thickness (like a tissue paper) it would be millions (billions? trillions?) of atoms thick. Think how much pressure it could contain!
If a mesh say a million atoms thick (or make it a hundred million for a hundred fold safety margin) could contain a gas at a million atmospheres, it would revolutionize space travel (and every other form of transportation not to mention SCUBA diving). Yet the walls of such a pressure vessel would be so thin that, edge on, they wouldn't even be visible to the human eye!
Now that's what I call a super material.
Robots don't want meat, arable land, pure water, etc, etc (or, at least, I hope they won't)
Oh god, I hope they don't want to round up the humans and get us to do the work for them, so that they can lounge around all day and drink beer!
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
But they will want power, and metal "maybe".
Well, ok the robots can have Manowar then...
how long until