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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 recollect
by tjoff 3y 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.
- atoav 3y agoWhen I say "a decade" that was meant as an example timespan. Depending on how complicated the processes turn out you could also look at "multiple decades" or in some cases also "never". A problem with today's science world is that the funding is competitive to a degree scientists need to "sell" their findings with practical applications — the fact they expanded the edge of human knowledge has become worthless. So our systemically incentivized-to-sell scientists do just that. And sometimes it works out and sometimes it is just far fetched bs. But because the edge of current science is so precise, so small, so ho, so cold, so fast, so low energy, etc. translating even the best of finsings into commercially scalable processes has become a major undertaking and despite unprecedented wealth on the top of the society, the ones on top have become averse to risk.
- tjoff 3y agoI got that, but the question wasn't "where are the mind-blowing stuff we should have had by now", but rather - what are the most significant uses we've found? In my mind also implying that we might have long ways to go for the full potential. Perfectly reasonable question, especially considering past projections.
- 7thaccount 3y agoYep. They made entire disciplines of nanoscience and nano engineering to train grads to do jobs that didn't exist. I was one very briefly before seeing the writing on the wall and moving to electrical engineering.