8 ms·

> Unfortunately, borophene looks to be more difficult to produce than graphene. That said, as an ignorant person regarding graphene, it seems graphene never "t

> Unfortunately, borophene looks to be more difficult to produce than graphene. That said, as an ignorant person regarding graphene, it seems graphene never "took off" as mass-produced material so I wonder what actual applications with graphene can be seen in the wild, regularly produced and commercialized or embedded into some market product? It's been 15 years anyways, I hope borophene is not just graphene 2.0 in that sense.

DevoidSimo 6y ago
It's used in Vittoria mountain bike tyres apparently. No idea how many they sell, so may not be mass produced as such.
voxelghost 6y ago
It's been used to induce spin in Tennis racquet marketing for more than 5 years now. /s https://www.tennis.com/gear/2015/02/racquet-review-head-graphene-xt-speed-pro/53947/ https://www.tennis.com/gear/2015/02/racquet-review-head-grap... https://www.tennis.com/gear/2020/07/racquet-preview-head-graphene-360-extreme-series/89724/ https://www.tennis.com/gear/2020/07/racquet-preview-head-gra...
- kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
  Just like titanium (pigmented) golf balls.
- richk449 6y ago
  How does putting graphite in the frame "induce spin" if the ball is contacting the strings? Also - those sites are hilarious: > Graphene has been placed at strategic parts of the head and throat to optimize energy transfer into the shot. This is combined with Spiralfibers at the bottom of the hoop that stretch and untwist at impact to create more flex and enhanced feel. They might as well say that each racket is aged for 72 days under a pyramid to concentrate the chi. > By having more weight toward the part of the frame a player makes contact, the racquet can deliver more power. And by counterbalancing that with weight in the handle, it’s still maneuverable and easy to swing. So it has more weight in the head. And more weight in the non-head. So, basically, it is heavy?
  - chasd00 6y ago
    audio gear is the poster child for ridiculous claims followed closely by golf gear haha
  - dTal 6y ago
    Notice they said induce spin in the marketing, not the ball. I read it as a clever bait-and-switch pun, as "spin" is slang for misleading statements.
akiselev 6y ago
> That said, as an ignorant person regarding graphene, it seems graphene never "took off" as mass-produced material so I wonder what actual applications with graphene can be seen in the wild, regularly produced and commercialized or embedded into some market product? It's a chicken and egg problem. No one has really bothered to put graphene into a mass manufactured product because of supply issues and no one's got the resources to accelerate work on the supply issue because there's no demand. Actually using high quality graphene to e.g. improve the performance of a capacitor or a battery cathode/anode by a few percent is really easy once you are sure that any money invested in doing it at scale won't go to waste because of supply issues. Aluminum when through the same exact process in the 1800s so it's a natural consequence of the intersection of economics and science. I've got an old Scientific American from right after the Civil War with pages of people talking about this new wonder material aluminum and how it will change the world of metallurgy forever (and how useless the "machine guns" were during the war and the repeated discovery of heat treating asphalt and a bunch of other cool stuff). It wasn't until the Bayer and Hall–Héroult processes were invented in 1886-8 that aluminum became cheap enough to use in every day things. It took something like 60 years from first pure piece of aluminum for mass manufacturing to become practical but only 30 years before it changed the face of transportation and war.
- 8note 6y ago
  Really this sounds like a problem of missing government intervention. The government could treat graphene like corn until all the industries have built up around it
  - vinniejames 6y ago
    The problem is that there isn't a graphene farmers lobby group
  - missedthecue 6y ago
    How about instead of building and shuttering a billion dollar chat app every 2 years google puts some resources into it in the interest of diversification. All these tech companies are gonna need ever more batteries and Google would be well ahead if they can make the best ones.
ineedasername 6y ago
I thought it never took off as a mass produced material because mass production was rather difficult (read: expensive) That said, apparently it's been going down in price quite rapidly by order of magnitude: https://www.graphenea.com/pages/graphene-price#.XyDfAGkpCNw https://www.graphenea.com/pages/graphene-price#.XyDfAGkpCNw
- gnachman 6y ago
  It's amusing that they have a link to buy a square cm for $80 just above the graph showing that it will cost €0,1 in 2020.
  - Someone 6y ago
    In their shop, that’s just $76, and a square inch $113. Mounting on polymer film must be expensive, as, on copper, 15cm×15cm costs only €396 (less than $2 per cm²) You get a coverage of “> 97%”, so it seems manufacturing isn’t that good yet (or, maybe, they keep the good stuff for themselves and sell the scraps)
jdboyd 6y ago
Modern graphene work looks to have started in 2004, so it hasn't really been all that long considering that it takes time to work out how to produce it, how to actually make use of it, how to manufacture the things that make use of it, life span in applications, toxicity, etc. Also, any initial patents wouldn't have run out yet, which could prohibit bringing it to market. I wouldn't be surprised if it takes another 20 years to take off in actual products.
agumonkey 6y ago
Thing is, low level like material science often takes very long to take off. Even transistors didn't come out ready to use out of the box. Also some university published a technique to produce "large" amounts of graphene with near zero tooling cost (google 'flash graphene'). If it does work close enough to what they claimed it might be a real push toward democratization of graphene use.
- chasd00 6y ago
  I think first you need a showstopper need. the alloy required for the oxy side pre-burner in the SpaceX's Raptor engine was a true breakthrough. they did it in months because Raptor wouldn't work without it.
DrBazza 6y ago
> I wonder what actual applications with graphene can be seen in the wild Many trail shoe manufacturers are now using graphene in the soles for better grip.

DevoidSimo 6y ago

It's used in Vittoria mountain bike tyres apparently. No idea how many they sell, so may not be mass produced as such.

voxelghost 6y ago

It's been used to induce spin in Tennis racquet marketing for more than 5 years now. /s https://www.tennis.com/gear/2015/02/racquet-review-head-graphene-xt-speed-pro/53947/ https://www.tennis.com/gear/2015/02/racquet-review-head-grap... https://www.tennis.com/gear/2020/07/racquet-preview-head-graphene-360-extreme-series/89724/ https://www.tennis.com/gear/2020/07/racquet-preview-head-gra...

kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
Just like titanium (pigmented) golf balls.
richk449 6y ago
How does putting graphite in the frame "induce spin" if the ball is contacting the strings? Also - those sites are hilarious: > Graphene has been placed at strategic parts of the head and throat to optimize energy transfer into the shot. This is combined with Spiralfibers at the bottom of the hoop that stretch and untwist at impact to create more flex and enhanced feel. They might as well say that each racket is aged for 72 days under a pyramid to concentrate the chi. > By having more weight toward the part of the frame a player makes contact, the racquet can deliver more power. And by counterbalancing that with weight in the handle, it’s still maneuverable and easy to swing. So it has more weight in the head. And more weight in the non-head. So, basically, it is heavy?
- chasd00 6y ago
  audio gear is the poster child for ridiculous claims followed closely by golf gear haha
- dTal 6y ago
  Notice they said induce spin in the marketing, not the ball. I read it as a clever bait-and-switch pun, as "spin" is slang for misleading statements.

akiselev 6y ago

> That said, as an ignorant person regarding graphene, it seems graphene never "took off" as mass-produced material so I wonder what actual applications with graphene can be seen in the wild, regularly produced and commercialized or embedded into some market product? It's a chicken and egg problem. No one has really bothered to put graphene into a mass manufactured product because of supply issues and no one's got the resources to accelerate work on the supply issue because there's no demand. Actually using high quality graphene to e.g. improve the performance of a capacitor or a battery cathode/anode by a few percent is really easy once you are sure that any money invested in doing it at scale won't go to waste because of supply issues. Aluminum when through the same exact process in the 1800s so it's a natural consequence of the intersection of economics and science. I've got an old Scientific American from right after the Civil War with pages of people talking about this new wonder material aluminum and how it will change the world of metallurgy forever (and how useless the "machine guns" were during the war and the repeated discovery of heat treating asphalt and a bunch of other cool stuff). It wasn't until the Bayer and Hall–Héroult processes were invented in 1886-8 that aluminum became cheap enough to use in every day things. It took something like 60 years from first pure piece of aluminum for mass manufacturing to become practical but only 30 years before it changed the face of transportation and war.

8note 6y ago
Really this sounds like a problem of missing government intervention. The government could treat graphene like corn until all the industries have built up around it
- vinniejames 6y ago
  The problem is that there isn't a graphene farmers lobby group
- missedthecue 6y ago
  How about instead of building and shuttering a billion dollar chat app every 2 years google puts some resources into it in the interest of diversification. All these tech companies are gonna need ever more batteries and Google would be well ahead if they can make the best ones.

ineedasername 6y ago

I thought it never took off as a mass produced material because mass production was rather difficult (read: expensive) That said, apparently it's been going down in price quite rapidly by order of magnitude: https://www.graphenea.com/pages/graphene-price#.XyDfAGkpCNw https://www.graphenea.com/pages/graphene-price#.XyDfAGkpCNw

gnachman 6y ago
It's amusing that they have a link to buy a square cm for $80 just above the graph showing that it will cost €0,1 in 2020.
- Someone 6y ago
  In their shop, that’s just $76, and a square inch $113. Mounting on polymer film must be expensive, as, on copper, 15cm×15cm costs only €396 (less than $2 per cm²) You get a coverage of “> 97%”, so it seems manufacturing isn’t that good yet (or, maybe, they keep the good stuff for themselves and sell the scraps)

jdboyd 6y ago

Modern graphene work looks to have started in 2004, so it hasn't really been all that long considering that it takes time to work out how to produce it, how to actually make use of it, how to manufacture the things that make use of it, life span in applications, toxicity, etc. Also, any initial patents wouldn't have run out yet, which could prohibit bringing it to market. I wouldn't be surprised if it takes another 20 years to take off in actual products.

agumonkey 6y ago

Thing is, low level like material science often takes very long to take off. Even transistors didn't come out ready to use out of the box. Also some university published a technique to produce "large" amounts of graphene with near zero tooling cost (google 'flash graphene'). If it does work close enough to what they claimed it might be a real push toward democratization of graphene use.

chasd00 6y ago
I think first you need a showstopper need. the alloy required for the oxy side pre-burner in the SpaceX's Raptor engine was a true breakthrough. they did it in months because Raptor wouldn't work without it.

DrBazza 6y ago

> I wonder what actual applications with graphene can be seen in the wild Many trail shoe manufacturers are now using graphene in the soles for better grip.