Graphene flexibility in your smartphone

Strange ideas

Check out the weird vision of future smartphones in this Samsung concept ad.  I can't really imagine why I'd want a smartphone arranged like this but I do appreciate the wealth of opportunities that a flexible device could open up.

Current screen technology is rigid, primarily because the materials used in the construction are brittle and need to be kept straight to avoid damage.  Modern touchscreens use Indium tin oxide to provide that conductive electrical layer we control with our swipes, taps and flicks.  Indium is rare, expensive and very brittle so hardly an ideal material to build an industry on.

Too precious for touchscreens

What if there was a material that was electrically conductive, cheap to produce, abundant and flexible to replace Indium.  Sounds unlikely or we would already be using it.  Well, that wonder material is just around the corner and thanks to the truckloads of investment from the likes of Samsung, that game changing technology could be just around the corner.

Yes, the material, the answer to so many of our technology woes, is graphene.  Graphene seems to tick all the boxes . . .

• It's really just very thin graphite - we are not going to run out of graphite

  

  Wonderful graphene

• Manufacturing graphene will become cheap and very reliable - it's a natural product, scraped thin to just one atom thick
• It's transparent (because it's so thin)
• It's strong (the strongest material we have on earth)
• It's highly conductive - ideal for small electrical impulses

Can we even begin to comprehend where a material with such mind-boggling properties will take us?

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130306-bend-and-flex-for-mobile-phones

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

Flexible OLED

Roll up, Roll Up !

Could this be a technology to revolutionise displays from our smartphones to our TVs?

Sony flexible OLED

The potential applications for this tech seem endless.

All the big names are either getting ready to produce this amazing technology or making sure that they can source them through their supply chains.

I am really excited about this.  Displays are about to move to a whole new level.  This one, I'm sure, is a game changer.

Flexible OLED announcement by Samsung CES 2013

Quantum Dot (QD) 

Now this is an exciting development in the area of rollable/bendable displays.  Scientists from Manchester University have formed the spin-off company, Nanoco, to manage a technology involving tiny, tiny quantum dots that can be printed on flexible plastic sheets.

This is not just an experimental technology either, since they are working closely with certain unnamed asian electronics companies.

This sounds like one to watch.

S-t-r-e-t-c-h

Springy, stretching battey wires 

I'm always interested in developments involving battery technology.  We've made huge advances in batteries in recent years but they are still the Achilles heel that limits portability and longevity of use.  Take a look at this article that discusses an innovation in flexible battery materials

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21585817

Materials used for batteries are often very heavy and that limits their portability.  Look at the huge weight impediment for battery powered vehicles.  Not only are they massive, they have so much weight that a good degree of power is devoted to propelling this extra weight.

Battery weight in the future may not be such an issue if materials like Aerographite, developed at Kiel and Hamburg University of Technology move from the lab into full scale production.

Lighter than air space age material