Tuesday 7 June 2011

Graphene


Last year, the pioneers of Graphene, Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, University of Manchester, were awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize for Physics. Graphene is being touted as the "miracle material" of the century for its versatile properties and it is believed that it could spell the end for silicon and change the future of computers and other devices forever.

What is Graphene?
  • Graphene is largely taken from graphite composed of carbon atoms arranged in tightly bound hexagons just one atom thick
  • Three million sheets of graphene on top of each other would be 1mm thick
It is said to be the strongest material ever measured ("Some 200 times stronger than structural steel," mechanical engineering Professor James Hone, Columbia University, "It would take an elephant, balanced on a pencil, to break through a sheet of graphene the thickness of cling film"), an improvement upon silicon and the most conductive material known. Its properties have sent the science world - and the media - into a spin.

The band structure of graphine was first theorised and calculated by PR Wallace in 1947, though for it to exist in the real world was thought impossible. Not surprisingly, some link the timing of this discovery to materials discovered at the Roswell "crash site".

Read more.

3 comments:

  1. Knowledge about known and unknown substances, their properties, working and usefulness, will be revealed to us by Allah when the time is appropriate and that is why we are asked to have belief in the unseen and undiscovered.
    يؤْمنون بالغيبِ

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dervaish Sahab,

    This is why I treasure your thoughts here. You help put it all in perspective.

    We are but specs in the tapestry of knowledge that is Allah's creation. .

    ReplyDelete

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