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$10 Bet Brings Researchers Closer to Industrial Scale Graphene Production

Posted by Soulskill on from the all-about-the-hamiltons dept.

AaronW writes: After trying and failing to convince Nina Kovtyukhona to test her technique of separating layers of graphite and boron nitride to instead try graphene, Thomas E. Mallouk made a bet with Nina that her technique method would work. If it worked, Nina would owe him $10. If it didn't, he would owe her $100. The result was published in Nature yesterday (abstract). Thomas is $10 richer, and we are a step closer to industrial scale graphene production.

74 comments

  1. turn off the videos, slashdot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    what kind of marketing scumbags do you idiots have running this site? your stupid freakin' video ads are using 20% of my cpu! hmm, let's go see what's on solyentnews.org today...

    1. Re:turn off the videos, slashdot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just don't post AC, and have 'good karma' here. Or subscribe...

  2. Mistake in summary by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Nature and Nature Chemistry are not the same journal.

  3. Any chance of a summary in English? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    After trying and failing to convince Nina Kovtyukhona to test her technique of separating layers of graphite and boron nitride to instead try graphene

    Really? That makes no grammatical sense (I understand the chemistry...)

  4. Incomprehensible by macraig · · Score: 4, Informative

    This summary truly is fucking. It's incomprehensible. Thanks for the editing rubber-stamp, Soulskill.

    1. Re:Incomprehensible by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      Are you fucking stupid? We assume a certain level of intelligence for people that visit this website. Apparently you belong on Reddit.

    2. Re:Incomprehensible by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      This summary truly is fucking. It's incomprehensible.

      That's not the summary, that's your reading level.

      It's concise, and the entire thing is summarized in the first two sentences.

      Read more better.

    3. Re:Incomprehensible by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This summary truly is fucking. It's incomprehensible. Thanks for the editing rubber-stamp, Soulskill.

      +1

    4. Re:Incomprehensible by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's not the summary, that's your reading level.

      It's concise, and the entire thing is summarized in the first two sentences.

      It is summarised badly.

      After trying and failing to convince Nina Kovtyukhona to test her technique of separating layers of graphite and boron nitride to instead try graphene

      The technique didn't separate layers of "graphite and boron nitride" and the bet wasn't about trying graphene instead. The technique was for separating layers of boron nitride. The bet was over whether or not this technique could also separate graphite, and create graphene in the process. It's not just phrased badly, it's flat-out wrong.

      Thomas E. Mallouk made a bet with Nina that her technique method would work

      What's a "technique method"? Google defines the words as "a way of carrying out a particular task" and "a particular procedure for accomplishing or approaching something", respectively. Doubling up words of effectively the same meaning isn't clear or concise.

    5. Re:Incomprehensible by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      that's your reading level

      You got me (some other random AC), English/American is not my first language.

      All I see is a sentence which somehow got garbeled starting from the second "to" upto the following comma. I can see it says "to instead try graphene", but there is no mentioning of what its supposed to be instead of in the first place.

      It also seems to have no bearing on the former part of the sentence, which makes it even more difficult to comprehend what it tries to say.

      So, mister(s) "I can read it with no problem", maybe you should try to explain for us with a language problem, instead of just saying the equivalent of "You're dumb, as I understand it" -- without offering any proof for that claim (which allways makes think of a 5 year olds "I know things you don't" bluffing game).

    6. Re:Incomprehensible by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That argument hasn't held water in well more than a decade.

  5. what ? by bugs2squash · · Score: 3, Interesting

    So a, presumably, leading scientist balked at doing some research work for, presumably, sound technical and professional reasons, but all it took was the prospect of winning $100 to persuade her otherwise.

    This field needs to pay more!

    --
    Nullius in verba
    1. Re:what ? by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Insightful

      So a, presumably, leading scientist balked at doing some research work for, presumably, sound technical and professional reasons, but all it took was the prospect of winning $100 to persuade her otherwise.

      Except that she lost $10. If she was purely financially motivated, she would have faked a negative result, and collected the $100.

    2. Re:what ? by tomhath · · Score: 2

      I see from the article that the reason she didn't want to try her technique on graphene was because the consensus of literature on the subject was that her technique couldn't possibly work.

    3. Re:what ? by Khyber · · Score: 0

      "the consensus of literature on the subject"

      Sounds like every one of those dissenters needs to go the fuck back to school. Having looked at the process, it's plainly fucking obvious to anyone with ANY real engineering skill it would work, and work for many other different substances as well.

      I bet that 'consensus' was done by a bunch of idiots way the fuck outside their field of profession.

      --
      Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
    4. Re:what ? by kwbauer · · Score: 3, Insightful

      " the consensus of literature on the subject was that her technique couldn't possibly work."
      In other words, the science was settled, discussion was over and then we found out it wasn't.

    5. Re:what ? by someone1234 · · Score: 2

      From the article:

      "Kovtyukhova tried leaving out various agents and found that the oxidizing agent wasn't necessary for the reaction to take place." when using her mixture of acids (without the oxidizing agent) on boron nitride (a compound with a structure similar to graphite).

      Then she balked at trying the same mixture on graphite based on "the extensive literature saying that the oxidizing agent was required". Why? Why she tried to remove that frigging agent in the first place then?

      I mean: She knew that her technique without the oxidizing agent works on a material similar to graphite. She knew that the oxidizing agent is bad for graphite. Then why insisting on it???

      --
      Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
    6. Re: what ? by Fwipp · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Impostor syndrome - the feeling that everyone else is more qualified than you - is especially common in women in STEM fields. Makes you prone to thinking that your own ideas and innovations can't be right if they contradict established wisdom

    7. Re: what ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Says you!

    8. Re: what ? by TheCarp · · Score: 1

      That would make sense to me. Often times when you run into something that seems simple but nobody does it, turns out you missed something in your assessment about either how well it works or how much work is involved or even that it doesn't work.

      It reminds me of one of the things I noticed in my own profession as a sysadmin. Generally, if I toss relevant facts into google, and it doesn't pop up that somebody else had the same problem, then I likely missed something right there in the documentation. Turns out to be the case more often than I ran into something truly novel.

      It is hard to get past the feeling that "if it was that easy someone else would be doing it", and usually, its true....but sometimes it isn't and the only way you will know is to try. That is why research and development exist....to give it a try..... you know....before putting it in production.

      Course, if this was a bunch of sysadmins the bet would be more implicit, and if phrased properly and explicitly might be "I bet our production environments stability that this is going to work...."

      --
      "I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
    9. Re:what ? by weilawei · · Score: 1

      So we need gambling parlors instead of smoking lounges. ;) Clearly, that will stimulate scientific achievement!

    10. Re: what ? by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 1

      What if you're right, and you've been promoted above your ability level due to the fact that you belong to an underrepresented group?

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    11. Re:what ? by houghi · · Score: 1

      You need to learn a bit more about human behaviour. This is more about preasure then about money. Basicaly what he was saying was "Chicken!" in a more adult version.
      This is like the bet in a pub, where you know you will losse, but you still pay up the beer to see the trick.
      This is just people goofing around a bit, like people do when they interact with each other. I know, this is /. so the concept might not be something people know, but people goof around when they work together.

      --
      Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
    12. Re: what ? by Fwipp · · Score: 1

      Luckily, my job pays well enough that my savings account + unemployment can cover me for a while, once management finally wakes up and realizes I'm posting on Slashdot at work. :)

  6. a realityTV show idea by turkeydance · · Score: 1

    bet women "you won't do that."

  7. Re:a realityTV show idea by Bodhammer · · Score: 1

    Famous last words - "I can do this, hold my beer!"

    --
    "I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
  8. Who is the dumb one here? by Renozuken · · Score: 1

    This story does more of explaining what a bet is then describing the article.

  9. The horror by kaliann · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I live in fear of still being a lab rat in someone else's lab 14 years after I've earned my PhD and contributed pioneering advances to my field.

    Oh science, I love you, but there is some scary shit out there for those of us who don't get tenure. Or even a faculty position. Yikes.

    1. Re:The horror by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, every pyramid scheme needs a base.

    2. Re: The horror by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What's stopping you from building your own small lab and chasing your dreams?

    3. Re: The horror by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Money.
      Equipment, electricity, materials, space, personal, etc.

    4. Re:The horror by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, you can do more with a PhD than academics, you know. DOW, 3M, DuPont, etc, all pay R&D chemists well into six figures.

    5. Re:The horror by joocemann · · Score: 1

      Man up and make a company. Public funding isn't the only funding. If your ideas are valuable, market them. Summon the JC Venter in you.

    6. Re: The horror by joocemann · · Score: 1

      Lacking the capacity to think outside of the mainstream function of waiting in line for a dollar that isn't there.

    7. Re:The horror by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Do you realize that the term "man up" is quite insulting to a large portion of the population?

    8. Re:The horror by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > If your ideas are valuable, market them

      Again and again this fallacy. Please grow up: valuable [2, 3] does NOT imply marketable. There are a lot of thing of great value or invaluable not marketable. Most of the fundamental science falls in this category.

    9. Re:The horror by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The whole thing is insulting, as if the average person can afford the barriers to entry of starting a company. Especially if you're doing science with EH&S requirements, you need to comply with a huge set of rules that no one has read entirely. It's like suggesting "Oh you're thirsty? Just desalinate some seawater."

    10. Re:The horror by joocemann · · Score: 1

      If you choose to read it in an insulting way, it is insulting. Or you can understand the gist of it which is to say 'pull yourself up from your perceived limitations and do what is necessary to rise to a superior position in life." But.... You know.... You're interested in arguing about communication, and not staying on topic; The next generation of wasted life. I can guarantee you that you'll grow a lot more in life by staying focused. Then again, if you're here to learn about communication and not about the subject, this is right up your alley.

    11. Re:The horror by joocemann · · Score: 1

      Way to miss the point. If you have the mindset of losing, you will lose. If you think your work is not marketable, you won't.

      Do you know that fundamental science requires tools? Did you know that the best labs that find out amazing basic science findings get there by innovating amazing new tools? DO YOU RECOGNIZE THE REFEFRENCE TO JC VENTER? The human genome sequence is, in itself, hard to market and sell. The sequence was first found by one man, JC Venter. He beat a huge army of publicly funded labs. While those labs used existing technologies to each try to sequence parts of the genome and get together to glue sequences together, Venter innovated highly improved DNA sequencing technlology. And thus he sequenced the human genome first. Guess what followed? All of those labs, and more, bought his sequencing technology and the models to follow.

      If you can't find something to sell then you're destined to beg for money. I'd love to see a world without money that allocates resource based on meritocracy... But that's not reality.

      You may think I need to grow up, but I can guarantee you that you need to wake up and smell the coffee of capitalism and try to identify how to get what you want. If you're in the US and you will always beg for money, try your hardest to Elect Elizabeth Warren as president because she wants to double NIH funding.

      FWIW.

  10. Confusing summary - here's my version by MattskEE · · Score: 4, Informative

    The summary was not clear so here is my version based on my understanding of the work:

    Graphite is composed of many randomly oriented and sized layers of graphene. Intercalation is a process where compounds or ions can be inserted between the layers of a layered material such as graphite. These Penn State reseachers have discovered a new way to perform this intercalation by leaving out a strong oxidizing agent which was thought to be necessary but would damage the graphene.

    The research advisor Thomas E. Mallouk suggested trying it without the oxidizer. The researcher Nina Kovtyukhona was reluctant to perform this experiment as she thought it would be a failure. Her advisor persuaded her to try it by making a bet that he would pay her $100 if it succeeded, and she would pay him $10 if she failed. The experiment was a success, and researchers now have a new avenue to explore for synthesizing graphene.

    My personal thought is that while this is scientifically interesting and could lead to some engineering benefits down the road this will not lead to large scale production of graphene since it is just splitting apart graphene sheets from graphite, and these sheets are generally quite small. Large scale production to me would be getting fairly good uniform growth or deposition of graphene over large areas of a substrate which is of the order of 1cm or larger so that it can eventually be scaled up to the 30cm and 45cm wafers in the silicon industry. So unless other researchers come up with a way to make a graphene boule composed of decent sized graphene sheets this technique does not seem useful for commercial electronics.

    One things which makes graphene research expensive is that most growth methods end up with just little flecks of graphene material in random locations on a substrate, so a researcher or technician has to manually search for these and place contacts and gates on them using a manual lithography tool. It could even be automated but this would still be orders or magnitude slower than competing technologies.

    A new route to making graphene has been discovered that could make the 21st century's wonder material easier to ramp up to industrial scale.

    Whenever a press release uses language like this I am forced to point out that graphene so far has had zero compelling results for electronics applications. It is soundly beat by silicon and III-V semiconductors in terms of speed and dynamic range. Graphene transistors can be made reasonably fast (for certain but not all definitions of fast) but even so the signals that they can handle are only very tiny because of the lack of a bandgap. It has some wonderful properties but also some terrible ones which make its applicability suspect.

    1. Re:Confusing summary - here's my version by ihtoit · · Score: 1

      large scale production for me would be taking two metre wide, three metre long sheets of monatomically thin graphene and making hammocks out of them.

      Come back when they've managed *that*. :)

      --
      Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
    2. Re:Confusing summary - here's my version by rossdee · · Score: 1

      " taking two metre wide, three metre long sheets of monatomically thin graphene and making hammocks out of them."

      Because existing materials aren't strong enough to make a hammock that can support the average american?

    3. Re:Confusing summary - here's my version by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Or the average american is two meters wide by 3 meters wide.

    4. Re:Confusing summary - here's my version by SpammersAreScum · · Score: 3, Informative

      The summary was not clear so here is my version based on my understanding of the work:

      ...

      The research advisor Thomas E. Mallouk suggested trying it without the oxidizer. The researcher Nina Kovtyukhona was reluctant to perform this experiment as she thought it would be a failure. Her advisor persuaded her to try it by making a bet that he would pay her $100 if it succeeded, and she would pay him $10 if she failed. The experiment was a success, and researchers now have a new avenue to explore for synthesizing graphene.

      From the article:

      "I kept asking her to try it and she kept saying no," Mallouk said. "Finally, we made a bet, and to make it interesting I gave her odds. If the reaction didn't work I would owe her $100, and if it did she would owe me $10. I have the ten dollar bill on my wall with a nice Post-it note from Nina complimenting my chemical intuition."

      Looks like you got it backwards in your version.

    5. Re:Confusing summary - here's my version by MattskEE · · Score: 1

      So I did. Thanks for the correction.

    6. Re:Confusing summary - here's my version by MattskEE · · Score: 1

      Well in addition to falling apart in your hands there are some concerns that free graphene can be carcinogenic in a similar fashion to asbestos... so I'll let you try the hammock first ;)

    7. Re:Confusing summary - here's my version by zippthorne · · Score: 1

      So, it's fine as long as we don't go around breaking it up and dispersing it into the air, and our solution if it ever becomes commonplace will not be to just stop using it in new construction and take extra care when removing old construction, but to actively go in and smash up the walls of old buildings to make sure it gets broken up and dispersed to maximum effect in an occupied building.

      --
      Can you be Even More Awesome?!
    8. Re:Confusing summary - here's my version by Khyber · · Score: 1

      "Whenever a press release uses language like this I am forced to point out that graphene so far has had zero compelling results for electronics applications. It is soundly beat by silicon and III-V semiconductors in terms of speed and dynamic range."

      And III-V group semiconductors SUCK DICK AS A BATTERY.

      Please think a little further ahead than processors, please.

      --
      Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
    9. Re:Confusing summary - here's my version by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe now... But think ahead. In 20 years even Graphene won 't support the average American.

    10. Re:Confusing summary - here's my version by Hydrated+Wombat · · Score: 1

      I wish I had mod points to give any of the above.

    11. Re:Confusing summary - here's my version by ihtoit · · Score: 1

      no because something that folds down to something the size of an emergency blanket yet folds out to something you could tiw between two trees and go to sleep in, would be extremely useful for rural survivalists.

      FTR, I'm English, but nobody's perfect, eh?

      --
      Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
  11. Regular bet writ large to make interesting news? by Ocker3 · · Score: 2

    I'm betting that the bet in the story is either a fiction (to get journalists to cover the story) or a regular part of some lab's cultures "That'll Never work!" "Bet you it will!" "How Much" "10 gets you 100, I'll put it in writing" "You're on!" "Ooh, that's interesting..."

  12. Re:Regular bet writ large to make interesting news by sumdumass · · Score: 1

    If it wasn't for the apparent age of the images when I googled the names, I swear it was just a couple of frat kids not wanting to do any extra work but still curious about the results.

    I can imagine this bet taking place over a kegger.

  13. How long will it take for mass production by raind · · Score: 1

    I didn't see any estimates of how to speed up the process, any informed commentators? See it's funded my a military grant, so won't that delay public uses?

    --
    Get up!
  14. Re:Regular bet writ large to make interesting news by MattskEE · · Score: 1

    If it's a fiction it's a brilliant one which helps this story stand out from all of the other "Fantastic New Innovation in Graphene Which Will Lead to Large Scale Production" press releases that get put out every year.

  15. Interesting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    My undergraduate thesis in Materials Engineering (from 2010) was on possible applications of Graphene in Li-Ion battery annodes. I referenced the 1999 paper by Kovtyukhova mentioned in the article. I work in an unrelated field now but good to see advancements still being made.

  16. I don't understand by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I have been assured many times that we live in the era of 3D fabricators! Surely we can fabricate anything?

  17. Re:Regular bet writ large to make interesting news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Not quite the same as a bet, but there is some rich history in "prize" problems in mathematics, with a number of $100-500 problems out there. I know that Paul Erdo"s popularized this idea and that Ron Graham and Fan Chung continue it, but I'm unsure how common this is in other areas. The incentive to solve them is the source of the payment and the prestige associated with it rather than the cash value for the most part, unlike the Millennium Problems where the financial incentive is significant.

  18. This is huge! by joocemann · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I am super excited. The graphene capacitors from UCLA (about 18 months ago) can now be scaled up. They hired some company to try to scale up their tech, but maybe this finding can help. The implications for this is that new technologies are going to arrive in your hands and homes. Enjoy.

  19. Well-Written Summary by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    > "technique method"

  20. 99.9999% of the researchers ... by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 1

    Just because someone happens to be a "Researcher" does not mean he or she is automagically smart

    Even after that Nina girl pulled off a single-atom layer of Boron Nitrite - which is structurally very similar to Graphene - without dousing it with strong oxydizing agents, she couldn't muster the confidence that it might be possible the same procedure would work with Graphene as well --- she rather trust the so-called consensus , instead

    --
    Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
  21. Editors? What editors? by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 1

    to test her technique of separating layers of graphite and boron nitride to instead try graphene

    What?

    technique method

    What?

    Still, well done to AaronW for actually taking the time to write a summary, and not just copy and paste a couple of paragraphs from the article.

    --
    systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  22. Re:Women scientists... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Do you also whinge in the threads in which a woman has the nerve to state her opinions about being treated differently because she is a woman? Cuz, ummm, you are treating her differently.

  23. Beta summaries by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Slashdot must be teaming up with Lumosity. Most confusing summary ever

  24. More bad news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How quickly everyone has forgotten or dismissed the side effects of graphene does when exposed to the environment and living creatures.

  25. A google search could have saved $10 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    http://gizmodo.com/how-you-can-make-graphene-at-home-in-your-blender-1565497683

  26. Re:Thank god for those African scientists... by abies · · Score: 1

    Just to mess up with you
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...
    100k years ago we were all black (and slightly hunched)

  27. Re:Women scientists... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It does sound pretty bad that he had to bet her with 10:1 odds to simply try an experiment.