Graphene-Carbon is Awesome!

[Karoht]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphene

I keep reading more and more developments about this stuff.
The applications are staggering.
The ramifications of some of those applications are staggering.
I don't even want to think about the military applications.
Spacecraft and aircraft made/enhanced with this stuff could be awesome.
Cars with a Graphene skin would be interesting. Let alone if they can use it to perfect 'Ultracapacitors' and related EV tech.
It could be a godsend to 3D printing, which is already an amazing science/art on its own.

So many areas of science can and likely will changed by Graphene. Is it a potential game changer?

Discuss! Speculate! Wildly Speculate!

[Grinner]

I remember researching it a bit when IBM made an analog processor out of it. I never heard if researchers learned how to dope it so to create digital processors. It's a very cool piece of materials science, though.

[Karoht]

Economically, I'd like to throw some money behind whoever gets a good solid grasp on this technology first. But that got me thinking about some of the economic ramifications of this stuff. Not sure how much of that I can discuss within forum guidelines.

Sustainability and Green tech are going to love it. Cover a building in this stuff, I wonder how much power it would collect. Could it be made to polarize the windows on demand? Would it allow current or future electric cars to collect solar power? Change the color of the paint on demand?

Given how tough the stuff is, I imagine it would be great for cars, planes, or any other vehicle or machine that sees high wear and tear from the elements.
Heck, could it make a car bullet proof? Would it improve crash safety? Could it make a building less succeptable to disasters such as earthquakes? Could it be used on a house foundation to make it less succepable to floods or leaks?

[Ravens_cry]

Could it be used to make cables for a space elevator or similar concepts?
That's what I want to know.
I know with present materials we could build a space elevator on the moon and maybe even Mars.

[Grinner]

Could it be used to make cables for a space elevator or similar concepts?
That's what I want to know.
I know with present materials we could build a space elevator on the moon and maybe even Mars.

I'm not sure what it's tensile strength is like, but I feel like carbon nanotubes would be a better option for space elevators.

[Flickerdart]

I'm not sure what it's tensile strength is like, but I feel like carbon nanotubes would be a better option for space elevators.
What about carbon nanotubes coated in graphene? It would be the most powerful substance known to man.

[Grinner]

What about carbon nanotubes coated in graphene? It would be the most powerful substance known to man.

Graphene
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9e/Graphen.jpg/600px-Graphen.jpg

Carbon nanotube
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/Kohlenstoffnanoroehre_Animation.gif

...I assume you're joking. :smallconfused:

[faircoin]

Graphene has some cool features.

It can act as an electrical insulator between two layers. Moving the layers counteracts the van der Waals.

Electricity resistance is low because of Benzene rings.

Graphene as a Mobius strip is a topological insulator, that is, on the inside it insulates, while on the outside it conducts. This is a bit counterintuitive, because you can topologically decompose a Mobius strip into two cylinders. The field operator calculations work out through some clever Fourier series (I'm trying to remember the paper).

Graphene is a good light absorber because of its bandgap properties which are tunable in bilayer graphene in an electrical displacement field (functionally a superconductor).

Oh, and graphene has a tensile strength of 130 GPa. That's a big number, yo.

[supermonkeyjoe]

Graphene
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9e/Graphen.jpg/600px-Graphen.jpg

Carbon nanotube
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/Kohlenstoffnanoroehre_Animation.gif

...I assume you're joking. :smallconfused:

I think he was referencing how hyped up the media got about carbon nanotubes and nothing really came of it, then someone figured out graphene was a better way of doing it and the hype-train set off again.

I'm reserving my judgement of it until we get some real-world applications out of this, lab conditions are all well and good but it doesn't mean that replicating these results on a useable scale is cost-efficient or even possible.

[Karoht]

At the moment it isn't cheap to make. Which is bad.
The good news is, carbon is pretty darned easy to get your hands on.
Remember when carbon fiber was crazy expensive? The price came down pretty quickly when better techniques came into play, and with more production capabilities.
Which has been true of pretty much everything on planet earth.

[Ravens_cry]

At the moment it isn't cheap to make. Which is bad.
The good news is, carbon is pretty darned easy to get your hands on.
Remember when carbon fiber was crazy expensive? The price came down pretty quickly when better techniques came into play, and with more production capabilities.
Which has been true of pretty much everything on planet earth.
An even better example is aluminium. When it was first being produced, it was literally more expensive than gold, to the point Napoleon III served his guests on plates of aluminium.

[Karoht]

An even better example is aluminium. When it was first being produced, it was literally more expensive than gold, to the point Napoleon III served his guests on plates of aluminium.Related to that, didn't they used to blame Alzheimers (or some similar brain problem) on aluminium exposure?

Given Graphene's ability to act as a very specific membrane, I wonder if it means we might generate another method of chelation therapy (for removing heavy metals) that isn't as intensive. Or be able to apply chelation techniques to removing more toxins from the body.