Move over, graphene. There's a new super-material in town: Graphullerene Graphene, that much-hyped super-material yet to transform industry, has competition on the block in the form of a related 3D carbon structure made up of linked balls. The new material, dubbed graphullerene, could have potential applications in new kinds of optical and electronic devices owing to its ability to confine and …
I kinda hate the way science journalists stopped fact checking the claims of being the first("*") about everything. Fullerenes aren't a new class of materials and changing an F to a P make them so. Not the research was bad, or that the author was even necessarily making those claims. But unless I'm missing something sheet fullerenes are already about a decade old(making them, the theoretical structures were mapped out ages ago).
So this announcement would really be more like "novel new carbon structure built is made of sheets of linked polygonal structures" which doesn't sound as click baity, but why are we still letting universities juice up their press release like this?
Seems like for the last couple years you can't have an research announced without some obviously BS claim tacked onto it, many of which won't stand up to a basic Google search. Sometimes the same lab will claim the same first multiple times(lookin at you National Ignition Lab), hiding the truth that they keep changing the definition under a layer of fluff to distract the bobble-heads in the press. This isn't as sinister as p-hacking, but it still something we should be calling out, and if necessary sternly mocking people for.
Otherwise every day becomes a new temperature record(Coldest second tuesday in a month with less that 31 days since WW2 in Sheboygan, WI on a day that didn't snow!) and those that stand on the backs of other researchers don't give them a passing mention.
With Carbon70 or Carbon-540, you could trap nano-tubes in them and use them as a VIBRATION-BASED electrical power storage mechanism OR as an informational data storage mechanism where boron-nitride-based nanotubes or simple boron nanotubes (don't use Carbon nanotubes!) could hold a specific amplitude and/or frequency of mechanical vibratory state while TRAPPED WITHIN the 3D-XYZ Carbon-70 or Carbon-540 structure which could then be set to form a readable multi-bit data storage value at an areal density of Petabytes per Cubic CM ....OR..... be set to form a nanotube vibrations-based micro-battery of as much as a few tens of volts and tens of amps in a mere one cubic cm of volume.
The buckminster-fullerene-like structure TRAPS the nanotubes AND forms part of the electrical conduit structure to allow electrical current to flow to and from the trapped non-carbon-based nanotubes to form a nano-vibrations-based mechanical battery or becomes a vibrations-based databit storage mechanism.
There is ALSO the possibility a surface-effect static charge could be set on the trapped nanotube walls themselves that WOULD NOT NEED any mechanical vibration state of the trapped nanotube in order to act as the electrical power storage mechanism or as the databit storage mechanism! The amount of long-term static surface charge becomes the battery storage mechanism OR becomes a multi-bit data value all by itself!
Based upon the size of Carbon-70 and Carbon-540 structures we could increase battery power density by 100x and more over 2023-era Lithium-Ion batteries AND increase non-volatile computer memory storage by over a 1000x over today's densities!
It means we could store Tens to Hundreds of Watt/Hours or many Petabytes in the size of three sugar cubes!
NOW THAT is something to write home about!
V
I think between light's wavelength and a camera's CCD scanning you could end up with the mother of all Moiré effects.
That said, using that could be a good way to measure things at that scale.
In any case, impressive progress. Now let's see what can be done with it at a practical level, could get interesting.
past the point of just research and is moving into production. An Aussie company called GMG is building a factory to make aluminum graphene batteries, including EV style pouch batteries. The plant is expected to start production in 2024. Looking forward to it because the tech promises to give us 3 times the energy density of lithium with none of the toxicity or fire risk. Their batteries can handle 100 percent to 0 percent use while lithium can only be run from 20 percent to 80 percent without damage. And, they are supposed to be able to accept a 0 to 100 percent charge in 10 minutes. So, 1.5 megawatts in 10 minutes for a thousand miles of range as opposed to 500 kilowatts in 30-40 minutes for 300 miles theoretical/220 miles actual range. And to top it off, less than 1 percent capacity loss over 7000 recharge cycles. Neat stuff. I figure in 5 years all EVs will be using these batteries.
>>The first, graphene, is the well-known two-dimensional lattice of carbon atoms which provoked such enthusiasm and speculation following its discovery at the UK's University of Manchester in 2004
Since UoM only came into existence in 2004 it's amazing how it's discovery has been attributed to that organisation
To quote the wikipedia page
>> In 2001 he became a professor of physics at the University of Manchester, wow time travel too.
Almost like someone is trying to airbrush UMIST out of history
Eh? Where is the time travel and how is UMIST being airbrushed out of history?
Prior to the merger on 1 October 2004 of the Victoria University of Manchester and UMIST to become just the University of Manchester, nobody outside of officialdom really used the "Victoria" bit of the name of the former university. Take a look at any of Geim's or Novoselov's papers from before the merger, e.g. Sub-atomic movements of a domain wall in the Peierls potential, from December 2003 where they describe themselves as from "Department of Physics, University of Manchester, M13 9PL, Manchester, UK"
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