Graphene

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

Here is a very interesting new material. I discovered this yesterday while I was talking with a material’s expert.

Graphene is a hexagonal flake of Carbon. It was theorized many years ago but only since 2003 has it been available for testing. Stay with me here I’m an engineer not a chemist so my simple explanation might be humorous to some. If you take a nanotube and split it open you have a piece of Graphene.

If you take carbon with its natural hexagonal molecular shape, a single layer of molecules can be ‘shaved’ off the larger piece of carbon. You end up with a two dimensional surface of carbon ONE molecule thick which makes it TWO dimensional.

There is of course a lot more to this then what I’ve said and you should check out the excellent article on Wikipedia.

The reason I’m bringing up is the amazing properties of this material. It has “perfect” thermal conductivity. Did you see the word perfect? At the molecular level if one molecule vibrates due to temperature then because of the molecular bonds they all vibrate; at once. It is highly conductive with almost ZERO resistance. It is TRANSPARENT and could be the next substrate for TV screens. Because of these properties it could become the next step in computer design which will allow Moore’s Law to continue. Aside from all this it is 100 times stronger than steel for the same thickness.

Now using this in Sci-Fi is interesting. Massive and fast computers become real in the next phase of computing. Potential space ship surfaces because, believe it or not it is also ‘self-repairing’ to a certain extent.

Ray Jay Perreault

http://rayjayperreault.wordpress.com