<
https://theconversation.com/graphene-at-20-still-no-sign-of-the-promised-space-elevator-but-heres-how-this-wonder-material-is-quietly-changing-the-world-239223>
"Twenty years ago this October, two physicists at the University of Manchester,
Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, published a groundbreaking paper on the
“electric field effect in atomically thin carbon films”. Their work described
the extraordinary electronic properties of graphene, a crystalline form of
carbon equivalent to a single layer of graphite, just one atom thick.
Around that time, I started my doctorate at the University of Surrey. Our team
specialised in the electronic properties of carbon. Carbon nanotubes were the
latest craze, which I was happily following. One day, my professor encouraged a
group of us to travel to London to attend a talk by a well-known science
communicator from the University of Manchester. This was Andre Geim.
We were not disappointed. He was inspiring for us fresh-faced PhD students,
incorporating talk of wacky Friday afternoon experiments with levitating frogs,
before getting on to atomically thin carbon. All the same, we were sceptical
about this carbon concept. We couldn’t quite believe that a material
effectively obtained from pencil lead with sticky tape was really what it
claimed to be. But we were wrong.
The work was quickly copied and reproduced by scientists across the globe. New
methods for making this material were devised. Incredible claims about its
properties made it sound like something out of a Stan Lee comic. Stronger than
steel, highly flexible, super-slippery and impermeable to gases. A better
electronic conductor than copper and a better thermal conductor than diamond,
as well as practically invisible and displaying a host of exotic quantum
properties.
Graphene was hailed as a revolutionary material, promising ultra-fast
electronics, supercomputers and super-strong materials. More fantastical claims
have included space elevators, solar sails, artificial retinas, even
invisibility cloaks.
Just six years after their initial work, Geim and Novoselov were awarded the
Nobel Prize in Physics, further fuelling the enthusiasm around this wonder
stuff. Since then, hundreds of thousands of academic papers have been published
on graphene and related materials.
But not everyone is on board. Skim through the comments section of any popular
article on the material, and you’ll quickly find the sceptics. We have endured
decades of empty promises about the real-world impact of graphene, they
complain. Where are the game-changing products to enrich our lives or save the
world from climate change, they ask.
So has graphene been a resounding success or a damp squib? As is so often the
case, the reality is somewhere in between."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
