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Graphene may have found its killer app
- jansan 4y agoI hope they will not find any nasty properties like they did with asbestos. Is it known what happens if you cut graphene and the dust gets into your lungs?
- labster 4y agoWe’ve already run that experiment on millions of schoolchildren. It turns out pencils are safe. And even safer without the wood around them — those are stabby bits. The graphene layers that make up graphite seem to be pretty harmless.
- alexb_ 4y agoAren't graphite and graphene different structurally?
- fspeech 4y agoFrom the article: "Graphite, the common form of crystalline carbon (the rarer one being diamond) is, in essence, a lot of layers of graphene piled on top of one another." So when you write by rubbing graphite on paper you leave behind graphene on paper.
- alexb_ 4y agoMakes sense. Although I would be surprised if pure carbon, of all elements, had a negative effect on our ability to live ROFL.
- zdragnar 4y agoDrinking too much water can cause a fatal electrolyte imbalance in your blood. Breathing too pure of oxygen will seriously, perhaps fatally, damage your lungs. Many metals are simultaneously important in trace amounts and debilitating or fatal in larger (albeit still small) quantities. That's just for things that you are supposed to do, only too much of. Graphene is not useful or an important part of your body's functions; doing things you aren't even supposed to be doing with it (breathing it in, for example) can only have a negative effect. Speaking of pure carbon, carbon nanotubes are known to cause lung tumors.
- asavadatti 4y agoGraphene is a single or very few layers of Graphite
- rjn 4y agoWe can get graphene by literally peeling it off graphite using a scotch tape. > That's where Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov came in. They took a hunk of graphite and used Scotch tape to peel off layer after layer after layer. Geim and Novoselov then analyzed what they had left, and found graphene. For their discovery – which was published in 2004 – they were awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics. https://science.osti.gov/Science-Features/News-Archive/Featured-Articles/2011/03-25-11 https://science.osti.gov/Science-Features/News-Archive/Featu...
- junofan 4y agoWell there’s always pneumoconiosis… I’m not sure schoolchildren are cutting concrete mixed with graphene in industrial settings. Probably should take appropriate precautions.
- kergonath 4y agoThere is a difference between a solid rod of something that tends to end up in someone’s mouth in the worst case scenario and small particles of the same thing that can end up in lungs. Asbestos is just a silicate, which is also not harmful in many cases, including almost anything made of glass. The problem is the physical form, not the chemical composition or the atomic-scale structure. Not to say that graphene is carcinogenic; I don’t know the literature. But it probably should not be dismissed out of hand purely because graphite is common.
- feoren 4y agoBut small particles surely do end up in the lungs when you're writing with a pencil, right? Certainly when you're drawing with one. Less than 100% of the graphene ends up on the paper ...
- kergonath 4y agoSmall particles of everything end up in our lungs, the question is whether they remain there, as opposed to break down or get decomposed, and whether they cause any harm. Dose is important as well.
- incompatible 4y agoThe solid rod of the pencil is graphite, not graphene. You can make a bit of graphene from the graphite by using sticky tape, I read. I'm not sure how much graphene "pollution" would appear spontaneously when using a pencil in a normal way.
- labster 4y agoHave you never used a pencil sharpener before? Never smelled the sweet aroma of sawdust and shaved graphite? You break it up on purpose, that has to release some graphene sheets.
- kergonath 4y agoThe parent's point was that graphene was harmless because graphite is widely used. Graphite is just a lot of graphene layers stacked on top of each other. Pretty much no dangerous particles are emitted during normal use of a pencil, which was part of the point.
- TylerE 4y agoForm matters. Asbestos doesn't pose any real risk as long as it's whole and not dust (either from mining or from breakdown of asbestos products). Small particles of ANYTHING entering the lungs isn't exactly healthy.
- ur-whale 4y agohttps://archive.ph/41Y4p https://archive.ph/41Y4p
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- gwill 4y agoSuch a shame graphene didn't blow up like it was hyped to. I remember hearing it was going to be the new laser. That's probably too extreme, but i wonder if it's just a material that we discovered "too soon" and quickly it will have tons of applications.
- labster 4y agoThe radioactivity of uranium was discovered in 1896, and it took nearly 50 years to make its killer app. But it sure made an explosive debut (sorry Japan). Chemistry and materials engineering just takes longer than software dev.
- nanomonkey 4y agoStudied photonics/laser physics in college, and my understanding is that lasers took a long time before being useful also. Only with the advent of laser diodes did they really take off for digital media and communications.
- andi999 4y agoCould be. It could also be that we invented/discovered a useless material.
- kergonath 4y agoDevelopments in the physical world take longer than in software. A lot of things are overhyped because people don’t understand the difference between a controlled experiment and a finished industrial product. But it’s not because the hype decreases that we won’t find uses in the future. So yeah, graphite was overhyped, pretty much like high temperature superconductors or other scientific fads of the last 50-odd years. This does not mean that we will never get anything useful out of this (high temperature superconductors found some use cases about 40 years after they were cool and new; there are many other examples).
- greenthrow 4y agoIt's a discovery that was hyped way too early and way too widely in order to drive research grants. I hope this behavior stops but unless incentives change it will likely only increase.
- DeathArrow 4y agoI think one of the potential most important applications of graphene is in the semiconductor industry.
- woleium 4y ago"The 5bn tonnes of cement produced each year thus account for some 8% of the world’s anthropogenic CO2, and generate abnormally high emissions per dollar of revenue earned compared even with other polluting industries (see chart). Yet if less than 0.1% by weight of graphene is added to the mixture, concrete ends up 30% stronger. And stronger concrete means less of it is needed, with a consequent reduction in CO2. "
- samus 4y agoHoping for the best, but hopefully this doesn't turn out to be such a hassle like asbestos :)
- sgt101 4y agoThe question is does it shed nanographite or other nano-carbon particles and if so, at what level. Of course, open fires and photocopiers produce these particles as well so there is some level of background exposure that appears to be somewhat "safe". I expect the "no such thing as safe" crowd will be out if they sniff the opportunity for a witch hunt or 10 [1] [1] https://particleandfibretoxicology.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12989-019-0299-z https://particleandfibretoxicology.biomedcentral.com/article...
- Aldipower 4y agoComparing my concrete wall to a photocopier seems a little bit strange.
- 5ersi 4y ago
- angarg12 4y agoMy father worked for the last few years in a company specialized in graphene technology and products. It's wrong for me to say this but I ended up not thinking much of it. The company pivoted many times trying to find a successful product. Their strategy seems to be "throw graphene at anything and hope for the best". As it worst it has used very dubious claims and armies of sales people to peddle their products.
- peter_retief 4y agoIt is difficult to work with graphene, for many reasons.
- hericium 4y ago> Their strategy seems to be "throw graphene at anything and hope for the best". This is basically science, backed by some know-how of what possibly may happen.
- News-Dog 4y agoFYI: Graphene : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphene https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphene
- andrea76 4y agoI cannot read entire story
- vinni2 4y agoThis is what is wrong with media these days. Writing every article with a title which makes it suspenseful and click worth and sensational.
- michelb 4y agoGraphene's killer app seems to be press releases :)
- teekert 4y ago“ It will help decarbonise industry” … Ironic.
- a3w 4y agoTechnically correct title: Decarbondioxiding construction industry. Well but not just, it's the carbon cycle. So any sink for carbon is decarbonising.
- teekert 4y agoIt's just funny because because they are going to de-carbonize with something that is pure carbon ;) In a way they could also say they are going to carbonize construction... But I get it of course, today if you say you're going to use crypto, it's not the same meaning as 10 years ago. In the Netherlands we have a "Nitrogen crisis", at first one is baffled as the air is 78% Nitrogen... Turns out they mean bound Nitrogen in the soil. I guess as a purist one could also be slightly annoyed when Corona virus is used to mean Covid19 or the actual virus (SARS-CoV-2). I guess all these example could be the basis for nerdy in-jokes. For example, because of poor naming conventions we are in the situation where the solution to THE Corona virus could be A Corona virus. Just speculating (actually less lethal strains are perhaps the solution).
- Andrew_nenakhov 4y agoCement... Where is my space elevator?! When I first heard about graphene ~20 years ago, I was promised a space elevator, and I'm still waiting.
- prox 4y agoEver since I watched Foundation, I am kinda not very keen on the idea.
- once_inc 4y agoDon't read the Red Mars trilogy. (do)
- prox 4y agoToo late, added to my want to read list :P
- LesZedCB 4y agoi don't know how a series can be both so good and so painfully boring at the same time. but KSR succeeded in both!
- leto_ii 4y agoI had the same feeling, but I'm curious which parts you found good and which painfully boring. Personally I enjoyed the politics and the society building and didn't care much for endless descriptions of rocky landscape.
- incompatible 4y agoLikewise, there aren't that many works of fiction that deal with anarchist societies and they are always fascinating to me. In hindsight, perhaps the endless descriptions of the landscape would be more entertaining if I'd tried to hand-draw a map from the descriptions. Well, I haven't read Blue Mars yet.
- mise_en_place 4y agoWhy not invest more time and energy into renewing old plastics? We already have an ideal material, it just needs to have a longer lifespan of use. I have no doubt graphene will be the material of the future, like plastics were when they first came out. But we have more pressing concerns.
- hans1729 4y ago> plastics [...] ideal material microplastics polluting every organ of every organism on the planet would like a word with you
- baisq 4y ago"app"?
- hgomersall 4y agoI'm keen to know how it might be used with other concrete innovations like https://carbicrete.com/ https://carbicrete.com/.
- rikeanimer 4y agoit's basically just a flex from the killer concrete industry. no sweat.
- a_r41 4y agoClicked thinking this was about GrapheneOS. I'm stupid.
- gruuya 4y agoGraphene's cousin, carbon nanotubes, have been touted as a concrete-strengthening additive for some time now[1], but the downside seems to be that corrosion sensitivity is increased.[2] Curious to see whether graphene would really be immune to that as is claimed. "And when, eventually, these things do reach the ends of their lives, if the graphene can be recovered and used again it would be a welcome boost to building a circular economy." This just sounds silly/unfeasible. [1] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmats.2022.861646/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmats.2022.8616... [2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-42761-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-42761-2
- amelius 4y agoHow safe is this? Will this add a graphene-flake problem to a microplastics problem?
- Digit-Al 4y agoThis is mentioned in the article as a concern that is being studied; you may have missed it.
- amelius 4y agoWell, I didn't get past the paywall ...
- neodymiumphish 4y agohttps://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/spaywall-spay-your-paywal/gofocbepaccnkpphbgjpolififgcakhn https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/spaywall-spay-your... Spaywall for the win.
- ZeroGravitas 4y agoThere's probably going to be a very large supply of carbon going cheap in the near future, we should start working out what we can use it for.
- dTal 4y agoWhat do you mean? We have that now. Just pop to your local gas station.
- simonebrunozzi 4y agoSerious question, and I hope someone could help me: I am going through a restoration work next year (2023) which involves concrete and a very delicate environment (city of Venezia, Italy), and would love to try to use graphene to strengthen the concrete. Quantities are not huge, so cost would not be a big issue for this particular project. What would be the best way to experiment with it, other than contacting Levidian Nanosystems and/or Dr. Tour and ask them?
- eurasiantiger 4y agoJosephson Junction superconducting semiconductors are going to be graphene’s killer app.
- m0d0nne11 4y ago[flagged]
- bell-cot 4y agoPlease disable js in your browser.
- sylware 4y agono "but to overcome the remaining challenge, more funding is required" ?
- solarpunk 4y agoIf we don't take this[1] sort of stuff seriously, graphene's gonna be the next asbestos. [1]https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/graphene-slips-deeper-into-lungs-than-predicted/3001864.article https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/graphene-slips-deeper-in...
- causality0 4y agoI swear these stories are like clockwork. Hey it's been six months, let's crank out another story about how graphene has finally made it as if we haven't heard that before. Put it on the garbage pile with the incredible battery breakthrough and the hey guys did you know Bitcoin went up/down again? articles.
- boringg 4y agoSells magazines - they have a recipe they follow. While it isn't all rote there is a cadence to it.
- sandworm101 4y agoI especially enjoy how this ties one of the most expensive products by weight (graphene) to one of the least (concrete). There is no greater tease for investors than suggesting that your knew tech might one day be an ingredient in concrete or steel.
- SamBam 4y agoAccording to the article, an 0.1% by-weight addition of concrete reduces the need for concrete by about 30%. (Extrapolating a little, based on the 30% strength increase, may not be exact.) So each gram of graphene reduces about 300 grams of concrete. Concrete looks like it costs about 5-10c per kilo. Graphene costs around $200 per kilo. So yeah, we're about an order of magnitude off, even if some of my numbers above aren't precise. It will either require a large price fall in graphene, or serious carbon taxes on concrete.
- sandworm101 4y ago>> reduces the need for concrete by about 30% Reduces the need for structural concrete by about 30%. Graphene makes the concrete stronger. That is important but not the entire purpose of concrete. Lots is used as space filler, liquid rock to seal against wind/rain/snow. Concrete is also used because it is heavy. Making it stronger won't reduce its use as a heavy anchor point for a structure. A giant wind turbine needs more than a strong base, but a literally massive one to prevent tipping over in strong winds. Graphene infused or not, that base still needs to weight the same.
- lampshades 4y agoCan't imagine we don't find out this stuff is super toxic in 50 years.