4 ms·

What is the greatest thing we have been able to use graphene for so far?

by dataflow 2y ago

confused_boner 2y ago
generating AdSense revenue
kylebenzle 2y ago
Transistors and energy storage probably.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
iancmceachern 2y ago
You can buy "heat spreader" sheets on Digikey that are graphene. They're used to help spread heat laterally when you don't have much thickness to work with.
scoobertdoobert 2y ago
Still in the experimental stage really. So I'd say spin injection and work towards useful spintronic devices
deepsun 2y ago
I wonder if somewhere there is a Graphene Store -- collection of all product utilizing graphene for it's properties. And it's empty.
helsinkiandrew 2y ago
A (surprisingly for a newspaper) good article about its lack of commercial success: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/apr/13/could-graphene-finally-transform-our-world https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/apr/13/could-graphe... > So what happened to the graphene revolution? Why has it not transformed our world? Sir Colin Humphreys, professor of materials science at Queen Mary University of London, has a straightforward answer: “Graphene is still a very promising material. The problem has been scaling up its production. That is why it has not made the impact that was predicted.”
- bdjsiqoocwk 2y ago
  That article puts nuclear in a "list of technologies that failed to make the grade". So I question everything else in the article. I agree that nuclear is underutilized, but putting it on the same list as an electric bike that flopped is.... I don't even have words
  - helsinkiandrew 2y ago
    Whatever your feelings about nuclear power, you can't really argue with the reason they think it has "failed to make the grade": > “Our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter” – Lewis Strauss, then chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission in 1954.
    - bdjsiqoocwk 2y ago
      Disagree. The comment is on price. Price is driven by a huge number of factors. It's not as simple as "if nuclear is successful, price is low otherwise it's high". One of those reasons is that when someone is more available you consume more, making price sticky. Also, consider where that comment comes from. It comes from a person who benefits from arguing that nuclear has magical economic powers. So you're saying that it's ok to say "nuclear failed because it didn't live up to ridiculous hype?". No, nonsense. Nuclear has been a huge success.
      - toss1 2y ago
        The price comment was not about "price is low"; it was about it becoming SO plentiful that the overhead in metering the cost would exceed the revenue and it could be just an on/off subscription This HAS happened with telecom services, where long-distance calls used to even be sometimes only one town over, and were charged by the minute. Toll-free (800)- numbers were a big deal. Now, the network is so successful and calls so numerous that it is literally too cheap to meter - you either subscribe or you don't. Per-call metering is only the case in some international calls. Nuclear electric power could have become this ubiquitous and successful, where the overhead of per-kilo-Watt metering outweighed the revenues. It would have merely had to scale up several more orders of magnitude. THIS was the prediction. Obviously, although nuclear did have some success this did not happen. The costs of commissioning, building, and decommissioning individual plants were just too high. We cannot conflate the actual modest success, producing barely 20% of power in the US in 1995[0], with the prediction of nuclear succeeding like telecomm. It did not happen. I think it could yet happen with some of the new small (neighborhood-scale), self-contained, inherently safe designs. But that is another prediction. [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/273208/nuclear-share-of-electricity-generation-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/273208/nuclear-share-of-...
atoav 2y ago
How quick do you expect a material science innovation to land in commercial products? E.g. if the superior quality of material X is proven in one study today, it might take at least a decade for material X to make it into a first run of a prototype chip series — maybe — if there have been a hundred follow-up studies that showed promise as well. Then how long does it take for that prototype chip series to feel like a viable alternative to existing, trusted solutions for product manufacturers? Most manufacturers will rely on the trusted, tested, known thing and only slowly will the new tech seep into their portfolio. At least another decade till you see significant adoption. The truth is that what we have in terms of materials is already pretty good — matching e.g. the precision with which we can manipulate silicone is not a thing you might just reinvent with another material with the snap of a finger. And because what we have is pretty good realizing the advantages of a new material is not a matter of years, but of decades. And this is a matter not only of physics, but of new manufacturing processes, a ton of R&D and investment. In some cases this might be easier, because the new material can be used with old processes, in other cases it might demand entirely different processes that haven't been invented yet. So everybody asking where the revolutionary thing from last years material science paper is just shows that they have no idea how the things surrounding them came to be. These things are moving far slower than you think. But they are moving.
- tjoff 2y ago
  Graphene was insanely hyped close to two decades ago though. Every other month you'd hear stories of things that could be disrupted by it. That was my recollection, though could be biased and me misremembering. But it feels like a valid question, especially since it has been two decades. Relevant section from Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphene https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphene : > In 2004, the material was rediscovered, isolated and investigated at the University of Manchester,[13][14] by Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov. In 2010, Geim and Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their "groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene".[15] High-quality graphene proved to be surprisingly easy to isolate. Graphene has become a valuable and useful nanomaterial due to its exceptionally high tensile strength, electrical conductivity, transparency, and being the thinnest two-dimensional material in the world.[4] The global market for graphene was $9 million in 2012,[16] with most of the demand from research and development in semiconductor, electronics, electric batteries,[17] and composites. There is also a section about applications that expands on it a bit.
bloopernova 2y ago
I have a heating pad that uses it. It's supposed to penetrate deeper, and does seem to help my lower back. If it's placebo, I'll take it.

What is the greatest thing we have been able to use graphene for so far?

confused_boner 2y ago

generating AdSense revenue

kylebenzle 2y ago

Transistors and energy storage probably.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

iancmceachern 2y ago

You can buy "heat spreader" sheets on Digikey that are graphene. They're used to help spread heat laterally when you don't have much thickness to work with.

scoobertdoobert 2y ago

Still in the experimental stage really. So I'd say spin injection and work towards useful spintronic devices

deepsun 2y ago

I wonder if somewhere there is a Graphene Store -- collection of all product utilizing graphene for it's properties. And it's empty.

helsinkiandrew 2y ago

A (surprisingly for a newspaper) good article about its lack of commercial success: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/apr/13/could-graphene-finally-transform-our-world https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/apr/13/could-graphe... > So what happened to the graphene revolution? Why has it not transformed our world? Sir Colin Humphreys, professor of materials science at Queen Mary University of London, has a straightforward answer: “Graphene is still a very promising material. The problem has been scaling up its production. That is why it has not made the impact that was predicted.”

bdjsiqoocwk 2y ago
That article puts nuclear in a "list of technologies that failed to make the grade". So I question everything else in the article. I agree that nuclear is underutilized, but putting it on the same list as an electric bike that flopped is.... I don't even have words
- helsinkiandrew 2y ago
  Whatever your feelings about nuclear power, you can't really argue with the reason they think it has "failed to make the grade": > “Our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter” – Lewis Strauss, then chairman of the United States Atomic Energy Commission in 1954.
  - bdjsiqoocwk 2y ago
    Disagree. The comment is on price. Price is driven by a huge number of factors. It's not as simple as "if nuclear is successful, price is low otherwise it's high". One of those reasons is that when someone is more available you consume more, making price sticky. Also, consider where that comment comes from. It comes from a person who benefits from arguing that nuclear has magical economic powers. So you're saying that it's ok to say "nuclear failed because it didn't live up to ridiculous hype?". No, nonsense. Nuclear has been a huge success.
    - toss1 2y ago
      The price comment was not about "price is low"; it was about it becoming SO plentiful that the overhead in metering the cost would exceed the revenue and it could be just an on/off subscription This HAS happened with telecom services, where long-distance calls used to even be sometimes only one town over, and were charged by the minute. Toll-free (800)- numbers were a big deal. Now, the network is so successful and calls so numerous that it is literally too cheap to meter - you either subscribe or you don't. Per-call metering is only the case in some international calls. Nuclear electric power could have become this ubiquitous and successful, where the overhead of per-kilo-Watt metering outweighed the revenues. It would have merely had to scale up several more orders of magnitude. THIS was the prediction. Obviously, although nuclear did have some success this did not happen. The costs of commissioning, building, and decommissioning individual plants were just too high. We cannot conflate the actual modest success, producing barely 20% of power in the US in 1995[0], with the prediction of nuclear succeeding like telecomm. It did not happen. I think it could yet happen with some of the new small (neighborhood-scale), self-contained, inherently safe designs. But that is another prediction. [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/273208/nuclear-share-of-electricity-generation-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/273208/nuclear-share-of-...

atoav 2y ago

How quick do you expect a material science innovation to land in commercial products? E.g. if the superior quality of material X is proven in one study today, it might take at least a decade for material X to make it into a first run of a prototype chip series — maybe — if there have been a hundred follow-up studies that showed promise as well. Then how long does it take for that prototype chip series to feel like a viable alternative to existing, trusted solutions for product manufacturers? Most manufacturers will rely on the trusted, tested, known thing and only slowly will the new tech seep into their portfolio. At least another decade till you see significant adoption. The truth is that what we have in terms of materials is already pretty good — matching e.g. the precision with which we can manipulate silicone is not a thing you might just reinvent with another material with the snap of a finger. And because what we have is pretty good realizing the advantages of a new material is not a matter of years, but of decades. And this is a matter not only of physics, but of new manufacturing processes, a ton of R&D and investment. In some cases this might be easier, because the new material can be used with old processes, in other cases it might demand entirely different processes that haven't been invented yet. So everybody asking where the revolutionary thing from last years material science paper is just shows that they have no idea how the things surrounding them came to be. These things are moving far slower than you think. But they are moving.

tjoff 2y ago
Graphene was insanely hyped close to two decades ago though. Every other month you'd hear stories of things that could be disrupted by it. That was my recollection, though could be biased and me misremembering. But it feels like a valid question, especially since it has been two decades. Relevant section from Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphene https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphene : > In 2004, the material was rediscovered, isolated and investigated at the University of Manchester,[13][14] by Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov. In 2010, Geim and Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their "groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene".[15] High-quality graphene proved to be surprisingly easy to isolate. Graphene has become a valuable and useful nanomaterial due to its exceptionally high tensile strength, electrical conductivity, transparency, and being the thinnest two-dimensional material in the world.[4] The global market for graphene was $9 million in 2012,[16] with most of the demand from research and development in semiconductor, electronics, electric batteries,[17] and composites. There is also a section about applications that expands on it a bit.

bloopernova 2y ago

I have a heating pad that uses it. It's supposed to penetrate deeper, and does seem to help my lower back. If it's placebo, I'll take it.