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Will Graphene Revolutionize the 21st Century?

Posted by samzenpus on from the step-right-up dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Much has been made of graphene's potential. It can be used for anything from composite materials — like how carbon-fiber is used currently — to electronics. 'Our research establishes Graphene as the strongest material ever measured, some 200 times stronger than structural steel,' mechanical engineering professor James Hone, of Columbia University, said in a statement. If graphene can be compared to the way plastic is used today, everything from crisp packets to clothing could be digitized once the technology is established. The future could see credit cards contain as much processing power as your current smartphone."

36 of 345 comments (clear)

  1. Wolverine? by Tobenisstinky · · Score: 5, Funny

    How does that compare to Adamantium?

    --
    wha'? where am i?
  2. Strong enough to make cables for Space elevator by Btrot69 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Its probably got lots of other great uses, but the one I think of most is that its strong enough to make cables for a space elevator. That alone would be revolutionary.

    1. Re:Strong enough to make cables for Space elevator by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Oh get over it. We do not have anything near the capabilities or even materials for such a structure. And even if we did, space is still empty. All that work for what? Better access to emptiness? You have a very poor understanding of reality.

      And you have a very poor imagination and sense of exploration. If nothing else, it would make maintaining our orbital space much cheaper. Combined with solar sails and asteroid mining, this could make space exploration drop to almost free in terms of the cost to our planet.

      Then we could finally get off this rock so if we don't figure out how to make it work here, at least we have some options to start over with. Then again, from a moral perspective, I continue to wonder if we need to make it work here, before we start fucking up the rest of the galaxy.

    2. Re:Strong enough to make cables for Space elevator by Smallpond · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Oh get over it. We do not have anything near the capabilities or even materials for such a structure. And even if we did, space is still empty. All that work for what? Better access to emptiness? You have a very poor understanding of reality.

      And you have a very poor imagination and sense of exploration. If nothing else, it would make maintaining our orbital space much cheaper. Combined with solar sails and asteroid mining, this could make space exploration drop to almost free in terms of the cost to our planet.

      Then we could finally get off this rock so if we don't figure out how to make it work here, at least we have some options to start over with. Then again, from a moral perspective, I continue to wonder if we need to make it work here, before we start fucking up the rest of the galaxy.

      Is that the same way that nuclear power was going to make electricity almost free? I've seen industry claims from the 50s that nuclear power would be so cheap they would stop putting meters on houses.

      A space elevator would be cool, but it would still be the most expensive thing to build and maintain ever.

    3. Re:Strong enough to make cables for Space elevator by Unkyjar · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Actually they said something along the lines of,"Your estimates make the world too small, there's no way you can sail west and reach Asia in the short period of time you are proposing."

    4. Re:Strong enough to make cables for Space elevator by aurizon · · Score: 3, Funny

      There is merit in this, as the Space Elevator concept would allow a low cost per pound into space, once the first cost is paid off. There has been a lot of chatter about this in the past, but until now, no material was ever up to the task. One problem was the inability of strong fine filaments to be bound into bundles and still keep their strength - a problem graphene may also encounter. A more down to earth application is unopenable crisp(potato chip) packets to be used as a diet aid for fatties, providing exercise and denying access...

    5. Re:Strong enough to make cables for Space elevator by tmosley · · Score: 4, Informative

      Wow, you really don't know much, do you?

      A space elevator here would allow us to have daily launches to Mars, the asteroids, and beyond, using basically no fuel (using the Earth's angular momentum). SImilar space elevators could be built on the Moon, Mars, and Jupiter's moons, meaning we could then use them to fling material back to Earth. Multiple elevators==dozens or hundreds of launches per day, and with a properly designed elevator, literally no fuel expended (ie one that unfurls continuously from the ground--this will be possible with new methods of mass production of graphene coming online now that are controlled by air flow, and can thus be made continuously).

      Christ, you sound like a Jester in the court of Isabella making fun of Columbus for wanting to go to an empty continent. Even empty, it is a giant virgin mine waiting to be tapped. Colonies will form there quickly enough with regular travel established.

      And debris at LEO are no problem, any more than they are for current ships. You will need to maneuver the ribbon around the debris while a lifter is going up. The rest of the time, they can just be allowed to impact the ribbon, as it is basically bulletproof.

      HURP, DERES NUTTIN OUT DERE!

    6. Re:Strong enough to make cables for Space elevator by Joce640k · · Score: 3, Funny

      That's cruel.

      The packets don't have to be unopenable, it just has to take more energy to open them than you'll get from eating the contents.

      --
      No sig today...
    7. Re:Strong enough to make cables for Space elevator by tmosley · · Score: 4, Interesting

      How about silver, which projections have shown that we will be OUT OF in twenty years? How about any number of other raw materials, where we can put the environmental disaster out into space where it won't do any damage, and allow the Earth to become a clean, green paradise? How about rather than trying to centrally plan a colony on an asteroid before we get there, we just let people go out there and mine whatever is profitable, and form their own colonies?

      And you don't NEED to "break ties" with Earth. It's called trade, and it built the world we know out of a world or primitive barbarism..

    8. Re:Strong enough to make cables for Space elevator by tmosley · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Uhhh, except this technology is the only one we were lacking, and we have it now.

      In space, there are resources. Lots of them. There are places where you can stick a 4000 square mile array of solar panels that will be lit for all but a few minutes each year. There are infinite amounts of metals, and fissile materials. There is SPACE to establish a new home for those sick of the Earth and her decadent ways.

      But thanks for deciding what is best for everyone, and what is even possible. We really appreciate it.

    9. Re:Strong enough to make cables for Space elevator by wagnerrp · · Score: 3, Informative

      Technically, that would be two-stage to orbit, with the first stage being the 'jettisoned' launch rail. You can't just 'pull back' once you hit the end of the rail. At hypersonic speeds, you would spend tens of seconds in low, dense atmosphere doing so, and would bleed off much of your initial launch energy. If you instead use a vertical rail, you would need depths of tens of miles in order to achieve the speeds needed for a a scramjet to operate without imposing too high acceleration on the crew.

      Mass driver/scramjet launches are a possibility for cargo loads, but unless we come up with some form of artificial gravity, they could never be used for manned launches.

    10. Re:Strong enough to make cables for Space elevator by Ironhandx · · Score: 3, Informative

      Heres the thing: If it wasn't for anti-nuclear nutjobs, which they couldn't predict, those promises would probably be a reality by now. We're about 15-20 years behind in nuclear power research due to anti-nuclear nutjobs preventing funding of new more efficient, less dangerous nuclear plants.

      Funny part is, those same nutjobs are the ones that are also responsible for keeping the old, less-safe designs going, as there is nothing to replace them.

    11. Re:Strong enough to make cables for Space elevator by HungryHobo · · Score: 5, Interesting

      something can be expensive to build and maintain and still be worth the money many times over.
      the US rail and road networks are incredibly expensive to build and maintain yet they're worth the cost.

      Now I couldn't even take a guess as whether it could be worth the cost since we don't even know what a space elevator might cost so I'm going to stick to fairly safe and general statements and simply argue that there are a lot of possibilities unless a space elevator would cost trillions.

      there's a hell of a lot of possibly very valuable applications if you could ship things to orbit for a very low price.

      orbital power arrays would be fairly sensible and could even be cheaper long term than some of the current energy production methods: get even a fraction of the world energy market and you'd be able to make/save a lot of money.
      There's some added advantages with zero pollution etc
      If it's one country building the elevator they could almost monopolize the market for a fair amount of time and rake in money building arrays for other countries.

      Once you build one elevator any more become far cheaper to build so much of the construction costs of the first could be spread out over multiple such elevators.

      any country which can ship lots of hardware into space for a low cost would also gain a significant military advantage: it's hard to build a bunker which can survive a thick tungsten bar dropped from orbit.

      There's pretty much the whole current worldwide market for launching satellites for communication and anything else which you'd pretty much take over.

      So you've got the energy market, the military market, the current space market and probably quite a few I've not thought of for income and those are big big markets.

    12. Re:Strong enough to make cables for Space elevator by msauve · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "How about silver, which projections have shown that we will be OUT OF in twenty years? "

      Really? Alchemy works? What is all the silver getting transmuted to?

      --
      "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
    13. Re:Strong enough to make cables for Space elevator by Iamthecheese · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It makes me sad that you were modded interesting. Your argument is shortsighted blather with a whiff of ad hominem.

      We all know what space is (huge, mostly empty, dangerous) but only you fail to acknowledge what it isn't. (an unsurmountable obstacle) People like you tried to stopped people from flying. The fact that technology isn't advanced enough to conquer space* without unacceptable sacrifice proves nothing about tomorrow.

      *Yes I said "conquer space". There are tremendous resources to be exploited and a universe of possibilities and I'm sorry you're too stuck in your pessimism to see that.

      --
      If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
    14. Re:Strong enough to make cables for Space elevator by wagnerrp · · Score: 4, Informative

      You don't understand. It's not like an airplane that you can deflect off the atmosphere. In two-body mechanics, the only way to change plane is direct thrusting with the engines. Gravity potential and aerodynamic losses of a LEO launch are only going to cost about 15% of the total delta-v budget. The rest is going to go into achieving orbital velocity. During a 90 plane change, your budget will be roughly 1.4 times your orbital velocity. Thus, a 90 plane change will be roughly 20% more expensive than getting to the same orbit from the ground. Note that is expense rated in delta-v, and actual fuel costs will be measured exponentially from that. Add into that your not-insignificant insertion burn coming off the elevator, and there's simply no purpose to it.

    15. Re:Strong enough to make cables for Space elevator by jo_ham · · Score: 4, Insightful

      For the exact reasons we've been talking about, and things like graphene have been hinting at; we don't have the materials to make a space elevator. We have the know how, and the imagination and opportunities with the sorts of things we could do if we had one, but so far have been unable to build one since the strongest material we have is just not strong enough to be useful (at least, not without it being absurdly heavy and impractical).

      Seems sort of obvious, really. We launch things into space right now at huge cost that modern society has come to rely on and at the very least expect - satellites (GPS, communications, TV, weather, science), and we're limited in what else we can send up there due to the huge cost of working against the Earth's gravity well by brute forcing it. Even if we don't decide to go out and mine asteroids, or mine helium from the moon, launching satellites that we use right now every single day for hundreds of reasons would be considerably cheaper with an elevator that exploited the angular momentum of the Earth... if you can find a material that is strong enough to built it out of.

  3. The future by Fuzzums · · Score: 5, Funny

    "The future could see credit cards contain as much processing power as your current smartphone."

    So I'll have to wait 5 minutes before my credit card finally has booted?

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    Privacy is terrorism.
  4. Well said, Dr. Avouris by sfranklin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    At the end of the article: "But the main thing is to be truthful and not exaggerate because we actually have to deliver." When there are some real-world examples, then graphene will be worth reading about.

    --
    Skip Franklin
    It's always darkest just before it goes pitch black. -- despair.com
  5. Processing power in credit card by michelcolman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Don't smartphones already have all their processing power contained inside something smaller than a credit card? The rest is just battery, screen, antenna,...

  6. Graphene will never be used for strong materials.. by MagusSlurpy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...because the difference between graphene and graphite is that graphene is one atom thick, bypassing the sheet-on-sheet sliding that makes graphite such a wonderful lubricant. If you want multiple sheets to be used in a material and still have some structural stability, you have to cross-link the atoms, which just gives you diamond (or amorphous carbon, if it's half-assed).

    No, if graphene is the material of the 21st century, it will be entirely because of its electronic properties, not the mechanical.

    --
    My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
  7. Ultracapacitors by Suiggy · · Score: 4, Informative

    I personally can't wait for graphene based ultracapacitors. They're reaching capacitances of 100,000 farads/kg in the lab which is just absolutely insane for a capacitor.

    1. Re:Ultracapacitors by CODiNE · · Score: 4, Interesting

      That's what I love so much about graphene. It was just sitting there all those years and nobody thought of it. I remember being in electronics class years ago when we calculated the size of a capacitor that could power an electric car for a certain distance. It was HUGE. Yet we all knew the formula for capacitance and nobody came up with even ultracapacitors. Finally with graphene capacitors are going to get an incredible leap in what they can do... and all that time it was right under our noses.

      --
      Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
  8. Cautiously Optimistic by gone.fishing · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I think graphene will probably fulfill some promises and fall flat with others. Since carbon (which graphene is) is a semiconductor I am more hopeful for it to become an efficient electronic resource. Because it is a semiconductor, I am less hopeful that it will become a better battery (carbon has been used in batteries for years but it's electrical leakage eventually drains an unused battery). As a material I expect that it will have the same shortcomings that carbon fiber has - in order to be strongest it needs to be pure which has proven difficult to achieve and therefore expensive. Graphene itself is expensive to manufacture. Is it even possible to chain it together to make long chains of it? I don't know but do know it is hard to do it with carbon fiber. What are the health consequences of making it, using it, or wearing it? So many things seem promising but end up being very bad (asbestos, lead, VOC's) that I am not sure it will launch. Seems like a submicroscopic sharp hard item may cause problems in the lungs.

  9. Wait for the patent trolls by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Wait for the patent trolls to join the party and tell me which century this will revolutionize.

  10. Re:Graphene will never be used for strong material by TheLink · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Can't you roll up graphene sheets like rolling up a sheet of paper, or multiple sheets of paper? Would you get structural stability that way?

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  11. Remember carbon nanotubes? by Bender_ · · Score: 3, Interesting

    A few years ago all the rage was about carbon nanotubes. An entire generation of phd students was raised on this material. Carbon nanotubes were the material of the future, enabling the space elevator, nanoscale transistors, near-superconductor conductivity and so on. What is left today?

    Even before that there were C60 buckyballs, another previously unnoticed carbon allotrope. Buckyballs were set to revolutionize chemistry and were (are) part of n-type organic semicunductors. What is left today?

    A fad is a fad, even in science. Of all the imagined applications a few will remain, and will be turned into real applications by technologists and engineers. The scientists will move on to the next fad - well at least those who are quick enough.

  12. Except, of course.... by DG · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...that most of the technologies used in your "self-sustainable" lifestyle are the result of recent developments and investments in new technologies, most of which have been about pushing down the costs of the tech involved.

    Your solar array? Only became feasible at the individual installation level in the last five years (and is improving rapidly) due to heavy R&D investment. Ditto that windmill (arguably, that's more about moving the industrial base to China and the associated cost savings - unless you have carbon fiber blades).

    And that's ignoring the effect of cheap and powerful computers on design - affordable solid form CAD, FEA, CFD, and ubiquitous CAM means that anybody can buy Solidworks, MasterCAM, and a HAAS 3-axis mill and start making chips at a startup cost that is a tiny fraction of what that capability cost even 10 years ago.

    Unless you are mining your own ore, smelting your own raw materials, logging your own trees, growing your own seed (and your own fertilizer) your are as much a part of "the system" as the rest of us; a couple of solar panels be dammed.

      DG

    --
    Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
  13. Re:I'd sure hope so by Smallpond · · Score: 4, Funny

    asbestos isn't bittersweet, it doesn't taste like much of anything.

  14. Re:Graphene will never be used for strong material by grumbel · · Score: 3, Informative

    Can't you roll up graphene sheets like rolling up a sheet of paper, or multiple sheets of paper?

    Yes, that would be carbon nano-tubes. However last time we played around with tiny incredible strong tubes that didn't turn out to well. Have to wait and see how things work out for carbon nanotubes.

  15. Re:Wait, graphene is a semi conductor? by gront · · Score: 3, Informative

    Graphene ribbons respond very well to changes in voltage making them very nifty (possibly) for transistors. Great flow when you want it in a controllable way. The main issue being that they don't have a very good "off" state. So you get a nice curve of voltage v. current flowing across them, except for the middle part around 0V. That's what everyone is working on. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphene#Graphene_transistors http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/graphene-transistors-cant-be-turned-off-wont-replace-silicon-in-processors-20110124/

  16. Re:Cringley comes to mind by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Funny

    Which is why all reasonably competent motorists store a failover family in a second, redundant, car. It just isn't economic to pay for extra reliability in a single unit when you can get six lanes of virtually disposable vehicles for the same money and cluster them with commodity bitumen.

    Send my love to spouse_02!

  17. I propose a game: by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The game is called "The Cynic's 4 Color Puzzle".

    1. Obtain an outline map of the world, preferably black and white.

    2. Select four colors. 1, 2, 3, and 4.

    3. Fill all areas of the world that you expect to be nigh-unimaginably futuristic(routine occurrence of transhumans, strong AIs, kilometer high metamaterial structures, etc.) in 2061 with color 1.

    4. Fill all areas of the world that you expect to be surprisingly mundane in 2061, except for a few of those wacky details that futurists never get right(everybody is still working in cubicles and flying aging 787s; but something as unexpected as facebook would have been in 1950 occupies 30% of the cube-dweller's time), with color 2.

    5. Fill all areas of the world that will still be "developing" in 2061(the local elites will have access to everything from the color 2 zones, and color 1s, if present; but the bulk of the populace will still be mired in such classics as mud farming, Kalashnikovs, and nokias) with color 3.

    6. Fill all areas of the world that will be radically dystopian and/or uninhabitable for cool reasons(radical climate shifts/flooding, nanite plague, biotech advances make new strains of smallpox and anthrax and friends as common as new malware is today, etc.) with color 4.

    7. Argue at length about one another's maps.

  18. Graphene's True Potential - Cat Hammocks by hedgemage · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "According to the Nobel prize committee, a hypothetical one-metre-square hammock of perfect graphene could support a four-kilogram cat - the hammock would weigh 0.77 milligrams, less than a cat's whisker, and would be virtually invisible." - Richard Van Noorden, Nature Magazine

    I'm glad that someone is addressing the need for invisible cat hammocks. FINALLY!

  19. Conductor issues by Xeranar · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The article makes a rudimentary statement about graphene and fails to acknowledge that it is a conductor and not a semiconductor. That limits some of its use without using it in a complex composite to create a limited semiconductor material. As it stands now though graphene would be excellent for power transfer and screen technology. I think it will certainly establish a change in the way technology is used as chips grow smaller and screens grow larger and more flexible. We could see folding screens in a few years which would be an amazing improvement over our current systems. Laptops could be equipped with unfolding screens. Smartphones could so the same. Home theaters could become portable in a quite interesting and unique way.

    In other words, it will revolutionize the 21st century as our viewing technology makes a giant leap forward but silicon is going to be the dominant semiconductor for atleast the next decade or so while they work out a graphene composite that can cut some of its conductor properties. But graphene could be the answer to the wall viewers, curved displays, and other super-sized designs.

  20. Re:Largest sheet yet produced? by gront · · Score: 3, Interesting

    40" sheet by samsung. http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20110125/189014/