Graphene...
... is there anything it can't do?
The latest study of miracle material graphene shows it could be used to provide a much higher speed internet. Yet another application for the boffin collective's research darling could be high-speed optical communications, which hadn't seemed like a practical application up to now because graphene absorbs so little light, just …
Graphene is very good in pencils. It slides off the graphite very easily and then sticks to the paper, allowing you to see the path the pencil took.
Although according to my wife, you can't decipher anything from the shapes I leave on the paper (Engineers' writing is almost as bad as doctors'), so in my case it doesn't help.
I'd like to see it replace tradition carbon fibre.
Particularly in bicycle frames; I'm sure my existing carbon fibre job is at least 3kg too heavy. It's definitely nothing to do with all the pies I've eaten recently...
Then again, it's massive tensile strength may end up being a hinderance (some compliance needs to be built in to stop it being too stiff). If they can't get it working with conventional Carbon fibre (see Ducati in motoGP), i doubt they'll get the graphene edition working either.
I seem to remember reading that Rare Earth Metals aren't really that rare; although they aren't easy to separate and purify.
As with most things, you used to get them in lots of places (including America), then everyone decided it was cheaper/easier to buy them from China and stop doing it themselves. That was great until people wanted China to make everything, so now China use most of the REM that they produce, meaning that it's harder for anyone else to buy them.
America and other countries could start processing them themselves again, but it's far easier to just bitch on about China (who are only in that position because everyone put them there; also to be honest if you only had enough food for you, you wouldn't go selling it to others, now would you).
As for reducing the need for REMs, not much. The lasers that you want to use for the transmission end will want a little Nd. Plus all the magnets for all the windmills to power them want loads more Nd, plus there's no point in having fast internet without screens etc, more REMs...
I stand back waiting to be flamed because I've totally misinterpreted the state of things.
I was just thinking the same thing.
It seems that graphene films can be fairly easily synthesised by chemical vapour deposition onto copper and nickel surfaces (which are arguably not "rare," relative to the "rare-earth metals" sense), then transferred onto any substrate suitable to the task at hand:
-- Nature: Category - Nanotechnology:
-- -- Roll-to-roll production of 30-inch graphene films for transparent electrodes:
-- -- http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/v5/n8/full/nnano.2010.132.html
-- Nature: Category - Paid-Access Article - Abstract:
-- -- Large-scale pattern growth of graphene films for stretchable transparent electrodes:
-- -- http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v457/n7230/full/nature07719.html
Combine an efficient method of constructing large-scale graphene sheets with a working MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical System) fabrication line, and we really could be on the way toward constructing those ultra-strength cables needed to build a practical Space Elevator...
Happily I am in a position (as a researcher in organic chemistry) to reassure you that graphene has a planer hexagonal structure and is definitely *not* rectangular with rounded corners. Even Cupertino will not be able to fire off writs over this one. Furthermore it was discovered in 1962 (first described by Hanns-Peter Boehm) a couple of decades or so before Apple was founded which should ensure that prior art applies regardless of any claims by the iPhanbois that Apple developed the iTardis in the early 1960s. -:)
"Samsung, in partnership with Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea, has already demonstrated a 25-inch flexible touchscreen using graphene"
Apple is preparing a patent lawsuit against Samsung for the use of flexibility on touchscreens, which they still haven't patented but they invented it anyway.
...
They invented it, no?
Samsung can't bring a product to market because they don't have an Apple one to copy.
The lawsuits are about "trade dress", nothing else.
N.B. Before you start blindly clicking the down vote button, I am not making any statements about the merits of the case on either side, just pointing out what they are about.
... is that Geim, one of the discoverers/isolators of this remarkable material that will no doubt add enormously to science and revolutionise technology, won an Ig Nobel Price in 2000 for magnetically levitating a live frog. Ten years later, he became the first person to win both a Nobel Price and an Ig!
I suppose the 'discoverer' could patent his process of producing graphene sheets (using sticky tape on a lump of graphite), but I suspect there are now better ways of making the stuff known. Graphene itself has been known about (at least theoretically) for much longer, I recall being lectured on the stuff at university back in the '90s. It is, after all, just a single layer of graphite one atom thick. The Romans were using graphite for writing more than 2000 years ago, if that's not prior art, I don't know what is...
The application of a novel material to old problems is almost certainly patentable. The fact that there is already a primitive method for harvesting graphene will not prevent someone who discovers an industrial scale mechanism from patenting it, and patent it they will as it will clearly be the Next Big Thing.
Making devices from graphene will not be done using today's silicon wafer tools and processes. New processes, whole new toolchain, new fabs. Patents all the way down.
"Making devices from graphene will not be done using today's silicon wafer tools and processes. New processes, whole new toolchain, new fabs. Patents all the way down."
Indeed Ru, I agree with you. They will in fact have to be *solid* *old style* patents that actually demonstrate a *working* process. Not vapourware inventions with no accompanying working prototype, purely designed to poison as large an area of the market as possible without any intention of ever actually manufacturing something.
Hyperspeed Internet, right.
I'm in the NY Metro area-- no 3G, no 4G, no telco copper DSL, no fiber, no cable, no terrestrial LOS.... really.
Only satellite (at least I can see the sky). Oh wait, the satellite company damaged the sat modem firmware, and they can't fix it (no parts you see, despite the modem being under warranty-- and they of course want me to pay to fix the Ku band modem if they did have parts, or buy a shiny new Ka band system at my own expense complete with two year contract). The satmodem seems to run a flavor lf Nix, but DMCA keeps me from fixing their clapped out firmware...
Going postal seems the only option left.
Yes, under the Cone of Silence there is quite a bit of iFanBois fat pipe envy!
The problem with the generalisation of "obscene" specs is that it invites equally "obscenely" bloated coding. It is incredibly difficult to find a system allowing you to edit 5 lines of text without a multi-GHz CPU and several G of RAM. The poor sods on dialup are the modern-day "untouchables" and when this new tech hits the streets you'll need at least a T3 for the most modest MSWindows update. Oh well.
All these new breakthroughs get way overhyped. It is only very seldom that we get to see even a quarter of the theoretical possibilities.
Anyone remember the superconductor hype of the 1980s? Superconductor everything. Well superconductors only showed up in very few niche applications.