Dec 31 2009

It's Thin, It's Cool, It's Graphene

Posted by: Jonathan Marshall

Science magazine's new list of the 10 most significant scientific breakthroughs of 2009 is a good reminder of how far we've come as a species in the blink of a geologic eye.

The journal's Breakthrough of the Year was the discovery of fossils of Ardipithecus ramidus, a four-million-year old primate species that sheds new light on the common origins of humans and chimpanzees.

Fast forward to this year, and Ardipithecus's offspring were being recognized by the journal for new kinds of gene therapy, discovering water on the moon and detecting rapidly rotating neutron stars known as pulsars.

One of the journal's ten breakthroughs has direct relevance for the future of clean energy: graphene. As discussed before in NEXT100 here and here, graphene is a miraculous crystalline form of carbon first discovered in 2004. A mere one atom thick, it is up to 50 times stronger than steel, a superfast electrical conductor, and the best conductor of heat ever discovered.

Today it is being studied for use in solar cells, lithium batteries and ultracapacitors (energy storage devices), high-speed semiconductors, light amplifiers, jet fuels and a host of other applications.

The University of California at Riverside this month reported that its Materials Science and Engineering department is looking ways to take advantage of graphene's remarkable thermal conductivity to dissipate heat from nanoscale electronic circuits, allowing them to be produced in higher densities.

At the University of Manchester, where graphene was discovered, researchers have announced that small chemical modifications--such as adding hydrogen atoms--can dramatically alter the material's characteristics. As one physicist there commented in August, "Being able to control the resistivity, optical transmittance and a material's work function would all be important for photonic devices like solar cells and liquid-crystal displays . . . Chemical modification of graphene . . . uncovers a whole new dimension of research. The capabilities are practically endless."

Graphene has already made its way out of the lab and into production. The Maryland-based company Vorbeck Materials is using graphene to create conductive inks, which it says will replace metal coatings and enable "cheaper, easier, greener printed [circuits]."

Over in Michigan, XG Sciences is making "graphene nanoplatelets" that it says are useful as "nano-additives for . . . strong, lightweight composites suitable for aerospace, automotive, or electronic applications" and in advanced batteries and ultracapacitors, among other applications.

Ohio-based Ansgtron Materials is now operating a 22,000-square-foot facility to produce the notoriously tricky substance. This month it won a grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology to develop its production process.

Many other companies will surely join them. A report this year from Lux Research on graphene's "Near-term Opportunities and Long-term Ambitions" projects that the super material has the "potential to impact $53 billion of intermediate products," from automobiles to displays, by 2015.

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