A carbon future

How game changing is this material?

We all know what kind of impact silicon has had on the computer industry. In fact it's fair to say that we wouldn't have the information technology world of today if some bright spark hadn't worked out how to use this cheap and cheerful material to form the basis of all modern computer chips.  You could rightly say that silicon ushered in a technology revolution.  No exaggeration - a revolution.

So what would your reaction be if you were told that we are now poised on the edge of something that is bigger than the silicon age?  Something so game-changing that the world is only just beginning to wake up to what could be done with this new material.

What is it?  Well, I said it was new but it isn't.  What is new is our ability to manufacture it.  Would you believe that it was discovered by accident by a couple of UK-based Russian scientists.  Their discovery and subsequent research earned them the Nobel prize for Physics in 2010.

OK, enough teasing.  What are we talking about here?  Drum-roll, please - we're talking carbon, well specifically graphite and more specifically a single layer of graphite that is one atom thick - 2 dimensional graphite or, as the scientific world knows it, graphene.

It may be hard to appreciate what graphene is.  After all, at an atom thick you can't see it.  You would need 3 million sheets of graphene to reach the thickness of a pencil lead.  Even when it's deposited on a substrate, it's not very exciting because all you are seeing is the container material.  Graphene research is way too big to cover in a single post.  Check back here for a more detailed look at some of the possibilities for this totally awesome material.

Graphene promo videos on YouTube