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Graphene: Fast, Strong, Cheap, and Impossible To Use
An anonymous reader writes: We keep hearing about the revolutionary properties of graphene, an atom-thick sheet of carbon whose physical characteristics hold a great deal of promise — if we can figure out good ways to produce it and use it. The New Yorker has a lengthy profile of graphene and its discoverer, Andre Geim, as well as one of the physicists leading a big chunk of the bleeding-edge graphene research, James Tour.
Quoting: "[S]cientists are still trying to devise a cost-effective way to produce graphene at scale. Companies like Samsung use a method pioneered at the University of Texas, in which they heat copper foil to eighteen hundred degrees Fahrenheit in a low vacuum, and introduce methane gas, which causes graphene to "grow" as an atom-thick sheet on both sides of the copper—much as frost crystals "grow" on a windowpane. They then use acids to etch away the copper. The resulting graphene is invisible to the naked eye and too fragile to touch with anything but instruments designed for microelectronics. The process is slow, exacting, and too expensive for all but the largest companies to afford. ... Nearly every scientist I spoke with suggested that graphene lends itself especially well to hype."
Quoting: "[S]cientists are still trying to devise a cost-effective way to produce graphene at scale. Companies like Samsung use a method pioneered at the University of Texas, in which they heat copper foil to eighteen hundred degrees Fahrenheit in a low vacuum, and introduce methane gas, which causes graphene to "grow" as an atom-thick sheet on both sides of the copper—much as frost crystals "grow" on a windowpane. They then use acids to etch away the copper. The resulting graphene is invisible to the naked eye and too fragile to touch with anything but instruments designed for microelectronics. The process is slow, exacting, and too expensive for all but the largest companies to afford. ... Nearly every scientist I spoke with suggested that graphene lends itself especially well to hype."
we weren't already doing so many things we were once told were impossible.
Just saying.
And yet, I read about a team in Cambridge in the UK who have a new low temperature process that can create graphene in industrial quantities.
http://cambridgenanosystems.co...
I'm sure manufacturing technology will improve if they find a good use for it. The triode wasn't very useful until they figured out its amplifying effect which lead to mass communication and became the basis of electronics. Why must this article shit on my graphene dreams? Do we just need to shit on everything these days?
it's just an engineering challenge. in the late 19th century, people would have scoffed at the idea of an electrical device with over 4 billion components in a few square centimeters that was mass produced.
Or imagine the most esteemed scientist of that day being told that a 200 meter long submarine vessel with a crew of 150 could be made with a power plant that only needed refueling every fifteen years, and that it could go for months underwater without surfacing, with weapons sufficient to destroy dozens of large cities.
Ah, yes, the New Yorker - when i need someone to cut through the latest scientific controversies, there is no finer swordsman.
Something like:
1) consume
2) expel waste
3) reproduce
https://www.youtube.com/user/RobertMurraySmith
I will just leave this channel here, that shows how easy it is to make it on small scale
Also graphene oxide can be turned into graphene with just laser from lightscribe-enabled dvd burner -.-
Also not every application requires high-purity/quality graphene
Materials and Process Scientist and Engineers will continually evolve the processes making it more cost effective. As for the "hype" about Graphine why are companies jumping on-board to manufacture it? Much like industrial and gemstone quality diamonds, or even Carbon Fiber, eventually a process will be found and Graphine will find more uses because it'll be less expensive.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
I'm a student at Rice, where James Tour teaches. First semester my freshman year, I made the mistake of trying to take Organic Chemistry with James Tour as my professor.
That class proved to me that I was not, in fact, a chemical engineer.
I switched to Computer Science the next year, but it always makes me laugh seeing Prof. Tour's name.
So is not shitting where you eat.
It probably doesn't help that virtually every conceivable use for the substance, whether it would work or not, has been preemptively patented as large corps play a legally enforced game of "dibs".
"In the mid 1880s, aluminium metal was exceedingly difficult to produce, which made pure aluminium more valuable than gold.[51] So celebrated was the metal that bars of aluminium were exhibited at the Exposition Universelle of 1855.[52] Napoleon III of France is reputed to held a banquet where the most honored guests were given aluminium utensils, while the others made do with gold." http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki...
...I mean, it's the miracle substance you can do anything with, so maybe you can use it to make graphene! :D
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
The same hype that graphene is made of...
Personally, I'm really bored with colleagues trying to throw graphene in absolutely anything they can find. Then, when it doesn't work, they try graphene oxide which is much easier to work with because it has some chemical functionality that allows you to actually get surfactants or other stabilisers to attach to it. They then write up papers where they talk all about the merits of graphene and then do all their experiments with graphene oxide... pity graphene oxide does not have the mechanical or electronic properties of the graphene they were so interested in...
Every time a new discovery is made, legions of naysayers appear to tell us how it will not make a difference or is impossible to implement or too expensive or, well, you fill in the blank. Never underestimate the ingenuity of people wanting fame, wealth, professional success, better mate selection or whatever. Graphene will be whatever it will be. It was only a relatively few years ago that these same people, or their ilk, thought they knew everything there was to know about the well-explored element, carbon. The future will reveal itself in due course and those who predict utopia or disaster are both likely to be wrong.
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
-- Pablo Picasso
The headline says cheap. The summary says expensive. If it's expensive to produce, it's clearly not cheap. Sure, carbon is cheap, but nobody says diamonds are cheap (because they're expensive due to the monopoly...).
C'mon Slashdot...
Perhaps they could extrapolate that construction process to use thousands of very thin copper strands which have been twisted and end joined so as to form a sort of helical toroid. It would take a considerable investment of time to construct such a copper lattice, but it could be used to form a multi-stranded graphene nanotube loop. If they were really smart they could even use a sort of fiber type wire which would be a corrosion resistant fiber like fiberglass coated in copper that would remain after the copper was dissolved, reinforcing the graphene loop without greatly affecting its electrical properties.
Dr. Michael Keidar at the George Washington university has developed a non-chemical reactive process to produce graphene in a single step.
Mpnl.seas.gwu.edu
It has been around since the 50s and they are still perfecting it. I suspect graphene won't be ready until mid century either.
Early 1940s "Silicon is impossible to use. Let's just give up."
Learn something new every day.
From the summary: "The process is slow, exacting, and too expensive" and "too fragile to touch". Yet the title says its fast, strong and cheap...
Sig?
Carbon?
well, graphene lends itself especially well to hype. Yet another addition to its extensive array fascinating properties.
Only faggots such as yourself are obsessed with whether or not a penis is circumcised and adopt such an elitist stance that circumcised men don't know what sex feels like.
Wow, what's with all the hatred? I don't see anything offensive in the above, just an incomplete perception. Maybe simply explaining the matter would've been enough.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
So the Magic tape was not enough for revolution after all.
There are other countries than US and they do research as well, maybe you should read about graphene research performed in Poland.
He didn't say you don't know what sex is, he said you've "lost most of [your] ability to feel what sex is". That doesn't mean you haven't had sex. It's all very well saying that partners make a difference - that's obvious to anyone who's had at least two partners - but that doesn't address at all the question of the difference between being circumcised and not being circumcised. As a non-circumcised man I can tell you that walking around with your foreskin pulled back inside your jeans is PAINFUL. Circumcised men have got to have WAY less sensitive bell-ends otherwise they'd be walking with a limp the whole time, that's a simple fact. If the circumcised want to get angry at someone (and obviously at least some of them do) they might be better off getting angry at whoever decided to get them circumcised, rather than shooting the messenger.
It's got nothing to do with his main point anyway. His main point is that condoms are probably more acceptable (less difference) to a circumcised person than a non-circumcised person, because of the lack of foreskin movement. As you say that doesn't address what I'd say is the main difference, which is the wet-skin-on-wet-skin sensation, but it does address a possible difference in acceptability across the customer base, and in a country where *most* men are circumcised (the USA) this could lead to a wider acceptance of condoms versus countries where *few* men are circumcised (most of the rest of the secular world).
OTOH I'm not sure what he's talking about, the foreskin rolls back naturally during penetration, and there isn't significant movement of it during penetrative sex AFAICT. The foreskin's main role is during foreplay IMO and only there as a kind of "shield" to protect the bell-end (as I said, it's PAINFUL if it gets too much, or the wrong kind, of stimulation). I'm not sure if there are many nerve-endings in the foreskin itself.
OTOOH I know enough non-circumcised men who have had painful accidents involving the foreskin to realize that circumcised vs non-circumcised isn't a simple question :)
On a more nerd-related note, thinner condoms could potentially work like reverse-osmosis filters, and allow the fluids through but not allow the sperm through. That probably wouldn't give you any STI protection but it would make for some pretty awesome worry-free sex with your long-term partner.
http://phys.org/news/2013-09-s...
"The resulting graphene is... too fragile to touch..."
"The process is slow, exacting, and too expensive..."
How the heck is this "fast, strong, cheap"?
It was done when I was freshly born, by a doctor and with anesthesia - which is the *only* acceptable way to to it, btw.!
I disagree. Genital mutilation should be restricted to necessary medical procedures, and people who want it done and can give their consent.
Elon Musk can convert coal into graphene by squeezing it with his buttcheeks.
But he won't, because he's too busy to run another company right now.
The new hot field:
Graphenomics.
Good for you. I'm one of the 1/500 men that it didn't work out so great for.
Wish I had a choice in the matter.
And indeed, some of us are. If you drive an electric car and live near a nuclear power plant, you might be one of them.
The atom powered car, ship, train or aircraft as imagined in the late forties, fifties and sixties was powered by an internal nuclear reactor.
The ideal would be a vehicle or a vessel that would never need refueling.
Tehy were a gold-rush in the late 1980s, but relatively few commercial products so far.
All these patents are going to expire before they become really useful. How about investing in something less fanciful next time?
Step 1. Devise a way to make graphene sex toys
Step 2. Funding will come
Step 3. Profit!!!!!
Undeterred by the manufacturing issues mentioned in TFA. Researchers from Spain have now found that by inserting little "islands" of lead, or more precisely lead atoms, into the hexagonal graphene structure, they can make the material highly magnetic.