Graphene-A Super Material

How will Graphene change technology?
Graphene is a very thin layer of pure carbon. Specifically, “it is a single, tightly packed layer of carbon atoms that are bonded together in a hexagonal honeycomb lattice. In more complex terms, it is an allotrope of carbon in the structure of a plane of sp2 bonded atoms with a molecule bond length of 0.142 nanometres. Layers of graphene stacked on top of each other form graphite, with an interplanar spacing of 0.335 nanometres.”
What is Graphene?
At only one atom thick, graphene  is the thinnest material we know. In fact, not only is it the thinnest, but it’s also the lightest (one square meter of graphene weighs 0.77 milligrams), the strongest (100-300 times stronger than steel), an amazing conductor of heat at room temperature, and the best electricity conductor known. And on top of all that, it is also highly flexible.
Simon Hill wrote an interesting article featuring five of the best graphene-based devices he saw at the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona where it had its very own pavilion named after it. FlexEnable created a curved organic LCD device in the shape of a thick handcuff. The display, according to Hill, “is based on a transparent graphene conductor integrated with a flexible transistor array.” These curved displays are exciting news. For example, think of your car windshield as a huge display giving you a full picture of what’s ahead, as well as all of the car’s data. In addition, driverless cars of the future could integrate security identification and destination choices in such a display.
FlexEnable’s other eye-catching device was a “flexible fingerprint sensor capable of outputting an image of your fingerprint in real-time.” Going back to the futuristic car, such a sensor could be located on the car door handle to permit access to the vehicle or on the steering wheel to turn on the engine after further identification.
Zap&Go tackled the matter of battery life and charging: their graphene battery pack fully charges in about five minutes. It consists of “a sandwich of 50 thin aluminium foil layers coated in graphene ink. All these layers create a large surface area which allows it to charge up very quickly. But unlike other super capacitors it can discharge at the correct rate to juice your phone.” Zap&Go plan to license the technology for electric drills and home appliances such as vacuum cleaners. The other main advantage of a graphene battery is that it never gets old. It can be recharged infinitely as it doesn’t rely on a chemical reaction like normal lithium ion batteries.
Nokia R&D have designed graphene gloves which have flexible sensors inside which would be the ultimate accessory for virtual reality applications. The sensors in the gloves would be able to pick up temperature changes and movement.
The last sensor Hill mentions is a highly accurate heart rate sensor, developed by the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO). It is a collaboration between the Catalonian government and the Technical University.
How was graphene invented?
Graphite has been studied for a long time during which scientists wondered if single layers of it could be isolated. The first isolated layer of graphite was discovered by Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov in 2004 at the University of Manchester. The way they performed the isolation was quite ingenious: they used a “roll of scotch tape”.
The tape was used to effectively polish a block of graphite which caused tiny flakes to stick to the tape. Scientists were able to remove these extremely thin layers off of the tape resulting in the one atom thin graphene. Their discovery was not recognised for many years, though it did result in the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010.
One major application other than gadgets for graphene would be in solar cells. Its high conductivity and transparency make it ideal for this purpose. In a traditional solar cell made of silicon, an incident photon releases one electron per hit on the cell. A cell made of graphene releases several electrons at a time per incident photon, Which increases the efficiency of the conversion of solar energy to 60% rather than the silicon based cells at 25%. Until now however, these are calculations are merely theoretical.
It seems that the super material graphene can provide us with a whole new and interesting range of technologies adapted to our lifestyles. We look forward to using them at some point in the near future.