Graphene

[rich]

The media does seem to overblow scientific breakthroughs so-called.

dumb question: are you saying scaling graphene would essentially
change it into something that isn't graphene anymore or does not have
the same physical properties? sorry, the only chemistry I've learned
in the last decade is from watching Breaking Bad ;)

rich

On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 8:36 PM, Prashant Kumar
<siva.prashant.kumar at gmail.com> wrote:
> Unfortunately the elephant-pencil thing (in SciAm, right?) thing is somewhat
> specious, in that "graphene" as thick as a pencil is just graphite.
> Alien-tech-level methods of fabricating such a thing notwithstanding,
> scaling up the mechanical properties of graphene in such a way would result
> in changes in physical structure which would nullify the technological
> applications.
>
> P.
>
> On Friday, 11 January 2013, rich wrote:
>>
>> thanks man
>>
>> I need a science guy to help me out. I did like the elephant and
>> pencil analogy. guess graphene replacing silicon is many years away.
>>
>> rich
>>
>> On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 9:32 PM, Prashant Kumar
>> <siva.prashant.kumar at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > For those who don't know, graphene is basically a single-atom thick
>> > layer of
>> > graphite with some very interesting physical properties. Basically,
>> > under
>> > certain conditions, you can force the charge carriers, erstwhile
>> > electrons,
>> > to behave as different kinds of particles, which results in a range of
>> > physically and technologically interesting phenomena.
>> >
>> > I  would argue that, all things considered, graphene is not bleeding
>> > edge;
>> > more properly emerging. It's not a technology in the sense a layman
>> > would
>> > recognise: it's reasonably far away from commercial application. Problem
>> > is
>> > with fabrication of suitable samples. The guys at Manchester who won the
>> > Nobel in Physics last year used what's now called the "Scotch tape"
>> > method.
>> > You get a sample of graphite and "exfoliate" (read stick it on and then
>> > peel
>> > it off) a layer of graphene. This is one of the most efficient methods
>> > known. However, graphene in this state is brittle, so there's problems
>> > scaling up.  Many of the really cool things you can do right now have
>> > also
>> > been demonstrated in other materials.
>> >
>> > Graphene electronics proper is I think maybe a decade or so away. Even
>> > then
>> > I think deployment of graphene will be in concert with other tech, most
>> > exciting of which is perhaps "spintronics". If an electron is spinning
>> > clockwise, it has spin down, anticlockwise, spin up. The idea is you run
>> > circuits using spin information. This allows for very interesting
>> > circuits,
>> > where information can flow both ways along a single line. Cool think
>> > about
>> > graphene here is that it exhibits such effects at room temperature,
>> > where
>> > every other material needs superconducting (~1-2K) temperatures, which
>> > limits commercial utility.
>> >
>> > P.
>> >
>> > On 8 January 2013 07:00, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> the "new plastic".
>> >> for those better equipped to explian it would u consider graphene a
>> >> potential bleeding edge technology?
>> >
>> >