5 ms·

How ‘Magic Angle’ Graphene Is Stirring Up Physics

129 points by toufiqbarhamov 8y ago

baldfat 8y ago
I still am waiting for Graphene to deliver a tenth of what was foretasted. Graphene has good company with Fuel Cells and every single new battery technology over the past 20 years.
- toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
  Graphene has a big advantage over them, although it is slow to deliver. New batteries or affordable fuel cells require breakthroughs in materials science, especially in the case of fuel cells. Inventing novel, cheap, mass-produceable catalysts to replace something like platinum, or a novel battery chemistry is a monumental challenge. Graphene already exists, but the propeties of the material are complex, and affordable mass production at the desirable scale is prohibitively expensive. Still, it exists, it can be made and manipulated, but a lot of exploration into its properties remains. I’d expect Graphene to be useful with a couple of decades, possibly sooner, while I wouldn’t even venture a guess on breakthrough batteries or fuel cells.
  - ianai 8y ago
    The solid state batteries from ionic materials (https://ionicmaterials.com/ https://ionicmaterials.com/) seem very promising in a quicker timeframe. Ie I could imagine them being able to fit a much higher density in the same volume given the stability of the material.
    - toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
      First I’ve heard of this company, but some Google-Fu reveals a lot of reasons to trust your optimism. They apparently got a $3m ARPA-E grant as well, and are producing something that works through a range of temperatures without forming denrites. Plus an increase in energy density of 115Wh/kg, while increasing stability and safety, even to rupture. Wow!
  - joe_the_user 8y ago
    It seems like graphene production at scale is something states should be putting money and resources into. It's the kind of thing much more amenable to a "new Manhattan Project" than something like AI.
    - vkou 8y ago
      The Manhattan project had an immediate, predictable return to its funders of "It will let us kill a lot of fascists, really quickly." Cui bono? Who will benefit from the DOE sinking a billion tax dollars into building graphene fabs? Will that benefit be greater then sinking it into something else?
      - r00fus 8y ago
        > Who will benefit from the DOE sinking a billion tax dollars into building graphene fabs? Isn't that the answer that {your_country} should own these industries before China/Russia/etc does? Because you can bet China is investing. I know someone who used to be the general manager of a large Chinese manufacturing plant, and all he wanted to talk about was how graphene was/is/will change whatever industry/tech I discussed. From a US perspective, there's billions wasted on make-work programs (TSA) and corporate handouts and subsidies that would greatly increase the tax base and develop local markets by reinvesting instead into new tech.
        vkou 8y ago
        What does it matter to me that Boeing is an American firm, owned by a bunch of international institutional investors, as opposed to a Korean one, owned by a bunch of international institutional investors? Is it because there used to be a Boeing factory in my town, before they moved all the jobs to somewhere cheaper? To put it another way - why should I care that a few private companies in {my_country} own these industries? Their owners aren't paying me dividends, I'm not going to pay for their R&D. If you want to sink this money into building a state-owned industry, where the profits are distributed between the people, sure, that's another story, we can talk about that. If not, appealing to nationalism is a poor motivator for me to fund your cottage industry. If you want my money, make me a shareholder. > From a US perspective, there's billions wasted on make-work programs (TSA) and corporate handouts and subsidies that would greatly increase the tax base and develop local markets by reinvesting instead into new tech. So, the solution is corporate handouts for industries that you like? Handouts for people growing corn, or groping your junk when you cross borders are bad, but handouts for people making graphene are good? (Unlike corn, the jury's still out on whether or not it will actually be useful. Maybe it's the next plastic. Maybe it's the next beanie baby. Maybe it's the next asbestos. It's too early to tell, and "Let's manufacture tonnes of it, before anyone has any use for it" is a solution in search of a problem.) I mean, sure, our current allocation of spending is probably not optimal[1]. I do think, that the onus is on you to demonstrate that sinking a billion dollars into building a graphene fab is better then sinking a billion dollars into killing fossil fuels, or shrinking classroom sizes, or providing free early-age child-care, or free flu shots[2], or any one of a dozen other things we should be doing[3]. [1] To be fair, I am 100% certain it is not optimal. [2] http://info.totalwellnesshealth.com/blog/bid/190040/How-to-Measure-the-Value-of-On-Site-Flu-Shots http://info.totalwellnesshealth.com/blog/bid/190040/How-to-M... - The ROI of a flu shot is >200%. [3] Not to mention that a lot of the time, being the first mover in an industry is unnecessary. Let someone else figure out if something is worth doing. If its that important, a sovereign state can always catch up, and develop a local industry, through incentives and tariffs - once the field is proven.
- Tossrock 8y ago
  I'm still[1] waiting on those silicon nanowire batteries. 8 more years! 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/dnlnf/breakthrough_edisplay_means_electronics_with_high/c11kkmu/?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/dnlnf/breakthrough...
  - candiodari 8y ago
    Thing is, we know what those are, we can give you a plan that will work. We can give you an atom-by-atom plan of those. We just can't make them (and we're very far away from that atm). (and yes a pretty good criticism is that we could 4x or so current battery designs' performance as well given atom-by-atom manufacturing capability)
  - philipkglass 8y ago
    They're being used now, albeit only in cost-insensitive applications like drones: "Amprius' Silicon Nanowire Lithium Ion Batteries Power Airbus Zephyr S HAPS Solar Aircraft" https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/amprius-silicon-nanowire-lithium-ion-batteries-power-airbus-zephyr-s-haps-solar-aircraft-300759406.html https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/amprius-silicon-nan...
- api 8y ago
  It usually takes more than 20 years to go from lab bench to wide application.
- Tade0 8y ago
  Graphene has good company with Fuel Cells and every single new battery technology over the past 20 years. They're here and in use. To give an example NMC batteries, which enabled smartphones, hoverboards, cleaning robots and other gadgets have been around since 2008 or so. EDIT: grammar.
- kybernetikos 8y ago
  I remember what it was like 20 years ago. There were a whole host of things we didn't have, at least partially because battery technology was so much worse.
- soperj 8y ago
  It took about 20 years from the first proposed lithium batteries until the first commercial one in 1991, at it wasn't until the last 10 years that they've really taken off.
- baldfat 8y ago
  Not sure why all the down votes but we still haven't found 14 years in how to use it in a consumer device. http://www.mining.com/these-are-just-15-ways-in-which-graphene-could-reshape-the-world/ http://www.mining.com/these-are-just-15-ways-in-which-graphe... "But after 13 years since researchers first created the revolutionary material from graphite, consumers is still waiting to see some of the touted applications in the market." 2017
jgrowl 8y ago
I wonder what happens if you stack more than two layers, adjusting by 1 degree with each layer.
- sytse 8y ago
  This is mentioned in the article, with three payers you don't even need to rotate: "Meanwhile, Feng Wang at the University of California, Berkeley, says he and his colleagues have seen signs of superconductivity in triple-stacked layers of graphene even without a twist. Layering three sheets in a particular orientation8 achieves a superlattice geometry similar to that in magic-angle twisted bilayers, and results in similarly strongly correlated physics, he says."
e98cuenc 8y ago
I'm a long time friend with Pablo, the main researcher behind this discovery, since our time together at the university. Every time this pops up there is some comment dismissing the discovery as yet another graphene theoretical breakthrough with no practical application. This discovery can help us better understand superconductivity at high temperatures, and that along will qualify it as a major discovery. It can also be super important in practice if we manage to bring graphene out of the lab. Not everything hits mass market in a 5 years timeframe... in the short term it may seem we have a slow rate of adoption of new technologies, but if you take a step back you can see the rate is fabulous. Graphene, batteries, solar cells and before them, transistors, nuclear power, etc. may take a while to hit the market, when they hit it they hit it hard.
- ThePhysicist 8y ago
  Super interesting approach. I worked on superconductivity during my time in Academia and my supervisor worked on high-Tc superconductors. Really fascinating to see the similarities here, as the high-Tc superconductors also seem to gain their superconductivity from their layered 2D structure. From my understanding Graphene offers a way to experiment with such layers in a more direct way by stacking them with an angle. I also think this could lead to many interesting new discoveries and material systems, but as you said it can take many decades for something like this to yield applied results such as new technologies. Still it’s absolutely worth it!
- leoc 8y ago
  > Not everything hits mass market in a 5 years timeframe... in the short term it may seem we have a slow rate of adoption of new technologies, but if you take a step back you can see the rate is fabulous. Graphene, batteries, solar cells and before them, transistors, nuclear power, etc. may take a while to hit the market, when they hit it they hit it hard. Most of those older comparisons still aren't flattering to graphene. We're nearly 15 years away from Geim and Novoselov's Sellotape trick now. 14 years after the first working laser in 1960 (though the first maser was in '53 and apparently the first paper was '51) the first supermarket barcode scanner was in operation, while Xerox PARC already had a working laser printer system. The first transistor was late 1947: the first consumer transistor radio was 1954 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regency_TR-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regency_TR-1 , and the US military had been using transistors well before that. Calder Hill nuclear power station (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sellafield https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sellafield ) opened in 1956, about 14 years after the Manhattan Project and Chicago Pile-1.
sushisource 8y ago
"Twistronics" has to be the coolest name I've seen in a while

I still am waiting for Graphene to deliver a tenth of what was foretasted. Graphene has good company with Fuel Cells and every single new battery technology over the past 20 years.

toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
Graphene has a big advantage over them, although it is slow to deliver. New batteries or affordable fuel cells require breakthroughs in materials science, especially in the case of fuel cells. Inventing novel, cheap, mass-produceable catalysts to replace something like platinum, or a novel battery chemistry is a monumental challenge. Graphene already exists, but the propeties of the material are complex, and affordable mass production at the desirable scale is prohibitively expensive. Still, it exists, it can be made and manipulated, but a lot of exploration into its properties remains. I’d expect Graphene to be useful with a couple of decades, possibly sooner, while I wouldn’t even venture a guess on breakthrough batteries or fuel cells.
- ianai 8y ago
  The solid state batteries from ionic materials (https://ionicmaterials.com/ https://ionicmaterials.com/) seem very promising in a quicker timeframe. Ie I could imagine them being able to fit a much higher density in the same volume given the stability of the material.
  - toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
    First I’ve heard of this company, but some Google-Fu reveals a lot of reasons to trust your optimism. They apparently got a $3m ARPA-E grant as well, and are producing something that works through a range of temperatures without forming denrites. Plus an increase in energy density of 115Wh/kg, while increasing stability and safety, even to rupture. Wow!
- joe_the_user 8y ago
  It seems like graphene production at scale is something states should be putting money and resources into. It's the kind of thing much more amenable to a "new Manhattan Project" than something like AI.
  - vkou 8y ago
    The Manhattan project had an immediate, predictable return to its funders of "It will let us kill a lot of fascists, really quickly." Cui bono? Who will benefit from the DOE sinking a billion tax dollars into building graphene fabs? Will that benefit be greater then sinking it into something else?
    - r00fus 8y ago
      > Who will benefit from the DOE sinking a billion tax dollars into building graphene fabs? Isn't that the answer that {your_country} should own these industries before China/Russia/etc does? Because you can bet China is investing. I know someone who used to be the general manager of a large Chinese manufacturing plant, and all he wanted to talk about was how graphene was/is/will change whatever industry/tech I discussed. From a US perspective, there's billions wasted on make-work programs (TSA) and corporate handouts and subsidies that would greatly increase the tax base and develop local markets by reinvesting instead into new tech.
      - vkou 8y ago
        What does it matter to me that Boeing is an American firm, owned by a bunch of international institutional investors, as opposed to a Korean one, owned by a bunch of international institutional investors? Is it because there used to be a Boeing factory in my town, before they moved all the jobs to somewhere cheaper? To put it another way - why should I care that a few private companies in {my_country} own these industries? Their owners aren't paying me dividends, I'm not going to pay for their R&D. If you want to sink this money into building a state-owned industry, where the profits are distributed between the people, sure, that's another story, we can talk about that. If not, appealing to nationalism is a poor motivator for me to fund your cottage industry. If you want my money, make me a shareholder. > From a US perspective, there's billions wasted on make-work programs (TSA) and corporate handouts and subsidies that would greatly increase the tax base and develop local markets by reinvesting instead into new tech. So, the solution is corporate handouts for industries that you like? Handouts for people growing corn, or groping your junk when you cross borders are bad, but handouts for people making graphene are good? (Unlike corn, the jury's still out on whether or not it will actually be useful. Maybe it's the next plastic. Maybe it's the next beanie baby. Maybe it's the next asbestos. It's too early to tell, and "Let's manufacture tonnes of it, before anyone has any use for it" is a solution in search of a problem.) I mean, sure, our current allocation of spending is probably not optimal[1]. I do think, that the onus is on you to demonstrate that sinking a billion dollars into building a graphene fab is better then sinking a billion dollars into killing fossil fuels, or shrinking classroom sizes, or providing free early-age child-care, or free flu shots[2], or any one of a dozen other things we should be doing[3]. [1] To be fair, I am 100% certain it is not optimal. [2] http://info.totalwellnesshealth.com/blog/bid/190040/How-to-Measure-the-Value-of-On-Site-Flu-Shots http://info.totalwellnesshealth.com/blog/bid/190040/How-to-M... - The ROI of a flu shot is >200%. [3] Not to mention that a lot of the time, being the first mover in an industry is unnecessary. Let someone else figure out if something is worth doing. If its that important, a sovereign state can always catch up, and develop a local industry, through incentives and tariffs - once the field is proven.
Tossrock 8y ago
I'm still[1] waiting on those silicon nanowire batteries. 8 more years! 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/dnlnf/breakthrough_edisplay_means_electronics_with_high/c11kkmu/?context=3 https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/dnlnf/breakthrough...
- candiodari 8y ago
  Thing is, we know what those are, we can give you a plan that will work. We can give you an atom-by-atom plan of those. We just can't make them (and we're very far away from that atm). (and yes a pretty good criticism is that we could 4x or so current battery designs' performance as well given atom-by-atom manufacturing capability)
- philipkglass 8y ago
  They're being used now, albeit only in cost-insensitive applications like drones: "Amprius' Silicon Nanowire Lithium Ion Batteries Power Airbus Zephyr S HAPS Solar Aircraft" https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/amprius-silicon-nanowire-lithium-ion-batteries-power-airbus-zephyr-s-haps-solar-aircraft-300759406.html https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/amprius-silicon-nan...
api 8y ago
It usually takes more than 20 years to go from lab bench to wide application.
Tade0 8y ago
Graphene has good company with Fuel Cells and every single new battery technology over the past 20 years. They're here and in use. To give an example NMC batteries, which enabled smartphones, hoverboards, cleaning robots and other gadgets have been around since 2008 or so. EDIT: grammar.
kybernetikos 8y ago
I remember what it was like 20 years ago. There were a whole host of things we didn't have, at least partially because battery technology was so much worse.
soperj 8y ago
It took about 20 years from the first proposed lithium batteries until the first commercial one in 1991, at it wasn't until the last 10 years that they've really taken off.
baldfat 8y ago
Not sure why all the down votes but we still haven't found 14 years in how to use it in a consumer device. http://www.mining.com/these-are-just-15-ways-in-which-graphene-could-reshape-the-world/ http://www.mining.com/these-are-just-15-ways-in-which-graphe... "But after 13 years since researchers first created the revolutionary material from graphite, consumers is still waiting to see some of the touted applications in the market." 2017

jgrowl 8y ago

I wonder what happens if you stack more than two layers, adjusting by 1 degree with each layer.

sytse 8y ago
This is mentioned in the article, with three payers you don't even need to rotate: "Meanwhile, Feng Wang at the University of California, Berkeley, says he and his colleagues have seen signs of superconductivity in triple-stacked layers of graphene even without a twist. Layering three sheets in a particular orientation8 achieves a superlattice geometry similar to that in magic-angle twisted bilayers, and results in similarly strongly correlated physics, he says."

e98cuenc 8y ago

I'm a long time friend with Pablo, the main researcher behind this discovery, since our time together at the university. Every time this pops up there is some comment dismissing the discovery as yet another graphene theoretical breakthrough with no practical application. This discovery can help us better understand superconductivity at high temperatures, and that along will qualify it as a major discovery. It can also be super important in practice if we manage to bring graphene out of the lab. Not everything hits mass market in a 5 years timeframe... in the short term it may seem we have a slow rate of adoption of new technologies, but if you take a step back you can see the rate is fabulous. Graphene, batteries, solar cells and before them, transistors, nuclear power, etc. may take a while to hit the market, when they hit it they hit it hard.

ThePhysicist 8y ago
Super interesting approach. I worked on superconductivity during my time in Academia and my supervisor worked on high-Tc superconductors. Really fascinating to see the similarities here, as the high-Tc superconductors also seem to gain their superconductivity from their layered 2D structure. From my understanding Graphene offers a way to experiment with such layers in a more direct way by stacking them with an angle. I also think this could lead to many interesting new discoveries and material systems, but as you said it can take many decades for something like this to yield applied results such as new technologies. Still it’s absolutely worth it!
leoc 8y ago
> Not everything hits mass market in a 5 years timeframe... in the short term it may seem we have a slow rate of adoption of new technologies, but if you take a step back you can see the rate is fabulous. Graphene, batteries, solar cells and before them, transistors, nuclear power, etc. may take a while to hit the market, when they hit it they hit it hard. Most of those older comparisons still aren't flattering to graphene. We're nearly 15 years away from Geim and Novoselov's Sellotape trick now. 14 years after the first working laser in 1960 (though the first maser was in '53 and apparently the first paper was '51) the first supermarket barcode scanner was in operation, while Xerox PARC already had a working laser printer system. The first transistor was late 1947: the first consumer transistor radio was 1954 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regency_TR-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regency_TR-1 , and the US military had been using transistors well before that. Calder Hill nuclear power station (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sellafield https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sellafield ) opened in 1956, about 14 years after the Manhattan Project and Chicago Pile-1.

sushisource 8y ago

"Twistronics" has to be the coolest name I've seen in a while