Is graphene a miracle material?
news.bbc.co.uk
Is graphene a miracle material?
1–10 of 53 posts
Re: Is graphene a miracle material?
#2[deleted]
Re: Is graphene a miracle material?
#3It's weird that this article mentions the problem of graphene lacking a semiconducting form and then fails to mention carbon nanotubes at all. I don't do research in this area, so I'm unaware, but it seems that much more work is currently being done with CNTs than graphene.
Re: Is graphene a miracle material?
#4Graphene and, more generally, carbon nanotubes are exciting because they have something-for-everyone. Silicon, plastics, water are examples of molecules or structures that have also been spun into important applications for just about every vertical. I suspect we'll seem carbon nanotube products explode over the next 20 years just as plastics did over the last 40.
The article focuses a bit on whether graphene can replace silicon, which I think kind of misses the point. The material will enable exciting new applications rather than merely transforming existing ones.
I'm also kinda bummed that this kind of research doesn't have a higher profile in the US. This is high-ass-tech and is probably an area in which our oil companies could play a very large role with their competencies at running large, highly complex, raw material production systems.
Re: Is graphene a miracle material?
#5There is currently a 1 billion Euro proposal for a grant on graphene research in the EU. [1] But the decision will not be made before the end of 2012.
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110308/full/news.2011.143.ht...
edit: Sorry, not to much new information here. They also mention it in the original submission.
Re: Is graphene a miracle material?
#6[deleted]
Re: Is graphene a miracle material?
#7Graphene and, more generally, carbon nanotubes are exciting because they have something-for-everyone. Silicon, plastics, water are examples of molecules or structures that have also been spun into important applications for just about every vertical. I suspect we'll seem carbon nanotube products explode over the next 20 years just as plastics did over the last 40. The article focuses a bit on whether graphene can rep…
Reading this article brought to mind this scene in The Graduate:
Mr. McGuire: I just want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: Plastics.
Benjamin: Exactly how do you mean?
So, I'm wondering how and where I should be investing to take advantage of this materials revolution. Seems like a pretty obvious bet to make, but it seems to be spread across many companies and with an indeterminate schedule (some say 5 years, some say 10, some say "we don't know"). And, more importantly, so many of the companies involved are too big for one product or even one line of products to make a huge dent in their bottom line. I've invested in IBM and Intel in the past based on research in the pipeline, and while the products did come to fruition and did prove to be good for the companies bottom line, the stock market didn't respond as much as one would hope (but probably about what I should have expected, had I really done the analysis of how it would effect their bottom line).
I'm not sure I follow you on the oil companies, though. Sure, they've been a major player in the plastics pipeline forever, but, if graphene isn't made from petroleum derivatives, I'm not sure it is a natural fit for oil companies. I would say the folks building LCD panels and other silicon-based products are the obvious candidates for some graphene products (and Samsung seems to be near the front of the pack in products based on graphene)...but maybe it'll be some other segment altogether (solar panel makers like Sharp and Kyocera, perhaps?).
Whatever happens, I want in, at least as an investor. So, I guess next time I review my portfolio (which currently contains GOOG and nothing else) I'm gonna do some more research on graphene. It's probably not a big rush to find the right companies...since it'll be a very long bet, anyway.
Re: Is graphene a miracle material?
#8Graphene and, more generally, carbon nanotubes are exciting because they have something-for-everyone. Silicon, plastics, water are examples of molecules or structures that have also been spun into important applications for just about every vertical. I suspect we'll seem carbon nanotube products explode over the next 20 years just as plastics did over the last 40. The article focuses a bit on whether graphene can rep…
> I'm also kinda bummed that this kind of research doesn't have a higher profile in the US.
Graphene gets a ton of attention, do not worry. It is one of the most competitive areas of materials science research. When my former gradschool groupmate did his proposal on it and all the experiments he wished to do for his PhD thesis (keep in mind he spent a year putting this proposal together) most of the experiments had already been done by the time his proposal was actually accepted. When I left the program, there was literally a "groundbreaking" paper per a week coming out in Science or Nature, and all the other publications were being flooded.
Re: Is graphene a miracle material?
#9If IBM can make a 150 GHz graphene transistor, why does Dr Phaedon Avouris, of IBM, say that it cannot replace silicon? Isn't clock frequency a measure of the transistor's ability to turn on and off quickly?
Re: Is graphene a miracle material?
#10If IBM can make a 150 GHz graphene transistor, why does Dr Phaedon Avouris, of IBM, say that it cannot replace silicon? Isn't clock frequency a measure of the transistor's ability to turn on and off quickly?
It's not only important what it can do, but also if you can produce it in the way you want.
Only time will show if dense packed transistors on a chip can be build cheap and reliably.