6 ms·

Nokia begins work on graphene

109 points by bhauer 14y ago

akiselev 14y ago
This is absolutely awesome. Hopefully Nokia's involvement will result in the development of much more industrialized and efficient methods for making graphene/graphene oxide and cheaply layer it without using expensive lithography methods. Hopefully they will actually publish their methods instead of just patenting them. Moreover, graphene may be cutting edge but it's incredible how accessible it is to citizen scientists. There is so much to explore and it's been less than a decade since graphene was first made. Full blown vapor deposition may be out of reach but there are plenty of chemical only methods or methods that require low vacuum (basically a bell jar vacuum) or high pressures/temperatures achievable without a lab. It was, after all, first produced with scotch tape.
- dclowd9901 14y ago
  Being that this tech was funded by a European grant, are they not under obligation to publish research?
  - akiselev 14y ago
    No idea, these grants have complicated terms and probably quite a few loop holes. They'll still publish lots of the basic research but maybe not the really valuable industrial stuff.
  - pfortuny 14y ago
    I do not think so: European Universities are largely State supported and afaik can patent whatever they want. But I do not know about this grant specifically.
  - Jtsummers 14y ago
    It's not uncommon for grants like that (in the US at least) to grant exclusivity rights for a period of time as a way to help motivate the research.
- sgt101 14y ago
  Patents are publications. You have to detail the whole of your method for the patent to be valid. In return you are protected for a limited period. The alternative is keeping things secret, like the recipe for coke!
  - jivatmanx 14y ago
    In Theory. In Practice it's often simply the statement of a vauge end result.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- reinhardt 14y ago
  I'm kinda torn about such announcements. Here's a new material that is stronger, lighter, and thinner than anything else on Earth. 300 times stronger than steel! One atom thickness! How cool is that!? So you have this amazing breakthough and the (first?) application to use it is... "build cell phones that are extremely light, durable, and less susceptible to overheating"? Seriously? Should we feel excited for shaving off a few grams of weight from 0.12 kg toy gadgets and making them last longer? Most people rush to replace their iThingie N when then iThingie N+1 hits the stores after a year or two anyway. Are these real problems, even as first world problems go? Reading such news feels like hearing about a child prodigy with PhD in quantum physics at 16 working on ad targeting problems for Zynga...
  - cududa 14y ago
    I disagree. For one, they aren't the only company included in this consortium. Having motivations of productization is actually a fantastic incentive for them to develop the technology to where it can be manufactured at a reasonable cost. Their work with the rest of the consortium will do wonderful things to bringing graphene into everything from consumer electronics to space exploration.
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
  - barista 14y ago
    I'm sure it will expand over time in multiple industries. Think Kinect. It started as a gaming device but is also starting to be used in physiotherapy and other medical applications.
  - akiselev 14y ago
    It is by no means the first application and certainly not the one Nokia will focus on. They will continue basic material science research into flexible electronics, LEDs/LCDs, and power storage. Graphene's uses are many more, however, including water filtration, transistors, meta materials, sensors, etc.
  - 14y ago
njharman 14y ago
If the run this like their phone business they'll fuck around for years with multiple, conflicting, self-defeating research projects. While better companies create whole new industries with graphene. Then throw out all their research and prototype products, declaring Aluminum is the future after they hire an ex VP of Alcoa.
nextparadigms 14y ago
Is Nokia still an European company? Didn't they close down the Finnish HQ and opened one in US? I hope they don't intend to use any of that money to prop their mobile business, and that they intend to open the results from that research at least to other European companies.
- cstejerean 14y ago
  As far as I know their headquarters is still in Espoo, Finland. They recently sold the building, and leased it back in order to raise cash, but they haven't moved out of the country.
hemancuso 14y ago
A $1.35B government grant over ten years? Talk about proping up your dying industry. Surely there are research universities and any other number of more capable research groups that could benefit to divide such a huge grant. This is a mobile phone company with fairly little investment in materials science from what I can tell. Unless injection molded plastics count.
- akiselev 14y ago
  http://research.nokia.com/ http://research.nokia.com/ Nokia still has almost 100,000 employees. Their research unit is over 500 people and world wide. Anyway, this money probably won't all go to Nokia as it is likely to collaborate with a lot of universities.
- jre 14y ago
  A little bit of context here : The graphene project[1] is one of the two "flagship" research projects in which the European Union just announced it will invest €1B over ten years. The other winner is the "human brain project"[2]. Those two were selected out of the 6 finalists [3]. The thing about those projects though is that no single institution or company is getting the €1B. In each project, the partners are distributed over all Europe and include the leading universities. Now, according to the graphene project webpage, two Nokia researchers will take part in the project[4]. And from their short bio, it looks like they work with graphene. [1] http://www.graphene-flagship.eu/GF/index.php http://www.graphene-flagship.eu/GF/index.php [2] http://www.humanbrainproject.eu/ http://www.humanbrainproject.eu/ [3] http://www.fet-f.eu/ http://www.fet-f.eu/ [4] http://www.graphene-flagship.eu/GF/consortium.php#p8 http://www.graphene-flagship.eu/GF/consortium.php#p8
jpxxx 14y ago
So a has-been telephone company that has less than a year to live gets a nine-digit check of taxpayer cash to do research in an area that is completely out of their competency? Sweet job if you can get it.
- robin_reala 14y ago
  No, they’re one of the recipients of the grant.
  - jpxxx 14y ago
    Ah, makes more sense. I should read more closely.
isalmon 14y ago
For those like me who never heard of graphene - watch the video at the end of the page - it's fascinating. Direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTSnnlITsVg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTSnnlITsVg
BCM43 14y ago
Damn it, I thought it meant this: http://jondot.github.com/graphene/ http://jondot.github.com/graphene/
jsnell 14y ago
I think people are completely misreading this. It's not 1.35 billion to Nokia. It's 1.35 billion to fund research in the area by many companies / universities / etc, with Nokia being just one of them. (Or at least that's how I read the article).
- guelo 14y ago
  Yea, this CNET story is a badly rewritten and less informative version of Nokia's press release which includes the fact that the winner of the money is the Graphene Flagship Consortium which consists of 74 different groups including many universities and governmental research institutions. Nokia is just representing the electronics sector in the consortium.
- TelmoMenezes 14y ago
  Exactly. This was one of the two European flagship projects that were selected to receive a big research grant. The other was the Human Brain Project. These grants are given to consortiums that include universities and private companies. These were the contenders: http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/ict/programme/fet/flagship/6pilots_en.html http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/ict/programme/fet/flagship/6pilo... And here's the consortium for graphene. Notice that the leader is the Chalmers University of Technology, Nokia comes in 8th: http://www.graphene-flagship.eu/GF/index.php http://www.graphene-flagship.eu/GF/index.php
- hkmurakami 14y ago
  I think we can at least partly blame the subtitle, which explicitly (and incorrectly) states that Nokia won a 1.35 billion grant.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
sp332 14y ago
>Forget diamonds, graphene is now the world's hardest material. I thought Wurtzite (cubic) boron nitride still held that title?
maym86 14y ago
"... and looks a bit like scotch tape, only infinitely thinner." Sounds like they just stuck this in because they heard the words scotch tape and graphine mentioned together. Graphine was first made using a the scotch tape technique by pulling graphene layers from graphite and transferred them onto thin SiO2 on a silicon wafer. Also it's not infinitely thinner.
- fastball 14y ago
  I watched the video first, and most of that article seemed to be haphazardly and sometimes inaccurately ripped from that video
yial 14y ago
So, just to clarify my own confusion. It's not actually "2D" it's that it's one atom thin, so that it might as well be 2D? Or am I mistaken, and it is actually 2D? Because what I am understanding is that it would still be a 3D atom? Or is there something that can explain this better. Thanks.
- hkmurakami 14y ago
  Can anything exist in "2D" considering we live in a "3D" world?
  - nsns 14y ago
    Rainbows?
    - Dylan16807 14y ago
      What? Rainbows are as thick as an entire cloud.
- sliverstorm 14y ago
  It is 2D the same way your drawings on a whiteboard with a white-erase marker are 2D. The ink left by your pen has 3 dimensions, yes, but the drawing is for all intents and purposes 2D. It's the same with graphene. The sheets are composed of 3D atoms, but the structure of a sheet is for all intents and purposes 2D.
diego_moita 14y ago
There is one thing that worries me about graphene. Its structure resembles me a lot the structure of cyclic aromatic hydrocarbons such as benzene. Now, we know that these compounds are extremely stable and resistant to heat, such as graphene. But we also know that, because of this, these compounds are extremely carcinogenic. Therefore my worries: wouldn't graphene also be a powerful carcinogenic? We had the same problem with asbestos and recently with nano-tubes, right? It was discovered they are carcinogenic precisely because they are extremely stable.
- mercuryrising 14y ago
  Asbestos is dangerous when it goes in, and when it comes out. The pipes in my house are insulated with Asbestos, but as long as I don't go break the insulation apart, I'll be fine. In many cases, Graphene or nanotubes will be used in a fixed form - they (hopefully) won't be used in aerosols. In something like an electronic component, the fullerenes would be locked in a plastic cage. You've probably inhaled graphene, nanotubes, and bucky balls if you have been around a bonfire.
- Raphael 14y ago
  Good point. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130115111551.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130115111551.ht...
- aqme28 14y ago
  Graphene is fundamentally the same thing as the stuff in your pencil. If graphene is carcinogenic, we've already been exposing generations of people to it.
  - vicks 14y ago
    Most pencils are made of graphite which is a form of carbon.
    - DigitalJack 14y ago
      And graphene is made of carbon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphene http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphene
bvcqw 14y ago
If only the government would give me a free grant of $1m!
sliverstorm 14y ago
At first I was worried this was more research in graphene transistors. Graphene transistors would be awesome, don't get me wrong, but building phones out of graphene seems both much more achievable, and a much more appropriate area of research for a company like Nokia!
bhauer 14y ago
Computer. Hello computer. A keyboard? How quaint. Seems better than transparent aluminum. Reality trumps 1980s science fiction soon? I can't wait.
Egregore 14y ago
Have anybody thought to use graphene in batteries?

109 points by bhauer 14y ago

This is absolutely awesome. Hopefully Nokia's involvement will result in the development of much more industrialized and efficient methods for making graphene/graphene oxide and cheaply layer it without using expensive lithography methods. Hopefully they will actually publish their methods instead of just patenting them. Moreover, graphene may be cutting edge but it's incredible how accessible it is to citizen scientists. There is so much to explore and it's been less than a decade since graphene was first made. Full blown vapor deposition may be out of reach but there are plenty of chemical only methods or methods that require low vacuum (basically a bell jar vacuum) or high pressures/temperatures achievable without a lab. It was, after all, first produced with scotch tape.

dclowd9901 14y ago
Being that this tech was funded by a European grant, are they not under obligation to publish research?
- akiselev 14y ago
  No idea, these grants have complicated terms and probably quite a few loop holes. They'll still publish lots of the basic research but maybe not the really valuable industrial stuff.
- pfortuny 14y ago
  I do not think so: European Universities are largely State supported and afaik can patent whatever they want. But I do not know about this grant specifically.
- Jtsummers 14y ago
  It's not uncommon for grants like that (in the US at least) to grant exclusivity rights for a period of time as a way to help motivate the research.
sgt101 14y ago
Patents are publications. You have to detail the whole of your method for the patent to be valid. In return you are protected for a limited period. The alternative is keeping things secret, like the recipe for coke!
- jivatmanx 14y ago
  In Theory. In Practice it's often simply the statement of a vauge end result.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
reinhardt 14y ago
I'm kinda torn about such announcements. Here's a new material that is stronger, lighter, and thinner than anything else on Earth. 300 times stronger than steel! One atom thickness! How cool is that!? So you have this amazing breakthough and the (first?) application to use it is... "build cell phones that are extremely light, durable, and less susceptible to overheating"? Seriously? Should we feel excited for shaving off a few grams of weight from 0.12 kg toy gadgets and making them last longer? Most people rush to replace their iThingie N when then iThingie N+1 hits the stores after a year or two anyway. Are these real problems, even as first world problems go? Reading such news feels like hearing about a child prodigy with PhD in quantum physics at 16 working on ad targeting problems for Zynga...
- cududa 14y ago
  I disagree. For one, they aren't the only company included in this consortium. Having motivations of productization is actually a fantastic incentive for them to develop the technology to where it can be manufactured at a reasonable cost. Their work with the rest of the consortium will do wonderful things to bringing graphene into everything from consumer electronics to space exploration.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- barista 14y ago
  I'm sure it will expand over time in multiple industries. Think Kinect. It started as a gaming device but is also starting to be used in physiotherapy and other medical applications.
- akiselev 14y ago
  It is by no means the first application and certainly not the one Nokia will focus on. They will continue basic material science research into flexible electronics, LEDs/LCDs, and power storage. Graphene's uses are many more, however, including water filtration, transistors, meta materials, sensors, etc.
- 14y ago

njharman 14y ago

If the run this like their phone business they'll fuck around for years with multiple, conflicting, self-defeating research projects. While better companies create whole new industries with graphene. Then throw out all their research and prototype products, declaring Aluminum is the future after they hire an ex VP of Alcoa.

nextparadigms 14y ago

Is Nokia still an European company? Didn't they close down the Finnish HQ and opened one in US? I hope they don't intend to use any of that money to prop their mobile business, and that they intend to open the results from that research at least to other European companies.

cstejerean 14y ago
As far as I know their headquarters is still in Espoo, Finland. They recently sold the building, and leased it back in order to raise cash, but they haven't moved out of the country.

hemancuso 14y ago

A $1.35B government grant over ten years? Talk about proping up your dying industry. Surely there are research universities and any other number of more capable research groups that could benefit to divide such a huge grant. This is a mobile phone company with fairly little investment in materials science from what I can tell. Unless injection molded plastics count.

akiselev 14y ago
http://research.nokia.com/ http://research.nokia.com/ Nokia still has almost 100,000 employees. Their research unit is over 500 people and world wide. Anyway, this money probably won't all go to Nokia as it is likely to collaborate with a lot of universities.
jre 14y ago
A little bit of context here : The graphene project[1] is one of the two "flagship" research projects in which the European Union just announced it will invest €1B over ten years. The other winner is the "human brain project"[2]. Those two were selected out of the 6 finalists [3]. The thing about those projects though is that no single institution or company is getting the €1B. In each project, the partners are distributed over all Europe and include the leading universities. Now, according to the graphene project webpage, two Nokia researchers will take part in the project[4]. And from their short bio, it looks like they work with graphene. [1] http://www.graphene-flagship.eu/GF/index.php http://www.graphene-flagship.eu/GF/index.php [2] http://www.humanbrainproject.eu/ http://www.humanbrainproject.eu/ [3] http://www.fet-f.eu/ http://www.fet-f.eu/ [4] http://www.graphene-flagship.eu/GF/consortium.php#p8 http://www.graphene-flagship.eu/GF/consortium.php#p8

jpxxx 14y ago

So a has-been telephone company that has less than a year to live gets a nine-digit check of taxpayer cash to do research in an area that is completely out of their competency? Sweet job if you can get it.

robin_reala 14y ago
No, they’re one of the recipients of the grant.
- jpxxx 14y ago
  Ah, makes more sense. I should read more closely.

isalmon 14y ago

For those like me who never heard of graphene - watch the video at the end of the page - it's fascinating. Direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTSnnlITsVg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTSnnlITsVg

BCM43 14y ago

Damn it, I thought it meant this: http://jondot.github.com/graphene/ http://jondot.github.com/graphene/

jsnell 14y ago

I think people are completely misreading this. It's not 1.35 billion to Nokia. It's 1.35 billion to fund research in the area by many companies / universities / etc, with Nokia being just one of them. (Or at least that's how I read the article).

guelo 14y ago
Yea, this CNET story is a badly rewritten and less informative version of Nokia's press release which includes the fact that the winner of the money is the Graphene Flagship Consortium which consists of 74 different groups including many universities and governmental research institutions. Nokia is just representing the electronics sector in the consortium.
TelmoMenezes 14y ago
Exactly. This was one of the two European flagship projects that were selected to receive a big research grant. The other was the Human Brain Project. These grants are given to consortiums that include universities and private companies. These were the contenders: http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/ict/programme/fet/flagship/6pilots_en.html http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/ict/programme/fet/flagship/6pilo... And here's the consortium for graphene. Notice that the leader is the Chalmers University of Technology, Nokia comes in 8th: http://www.graphene-flagship.eu/GF/index.php http://www.graphene-flagship.eu/GF/index.php
hkmurakami 14y ago
I think we can at least partly blame the subtitle, which explicitly (and incorrectly) states that Nokia won a 1.35 billion grant.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

sp332 14y ago

>Forget diamonds, graphene is now the world's hardest material. I thought Wurtzite (cubic) boron nitride still held that title?

maym86 14y ago

"... and looks a bit like scotch tape, only infinitely thinner." Sounds like they just stuck this in because they heard the words scotch tape and graphine mentioned together. Graphine was first made using a the scotch tape technique by pulling graphene layers from graphite and transferred them onto thin SiO2 on a silicon wafer. Also it's not infinitely thinner.

fastball 14y ago
I watched the video first, and most of that article seemed to be haphazardly and sometimes inaccurately ripped from that video

yial 14y ago

So, just to clarify my own confusion. It's not actually "2D" it's that it's one atom thin, so that it might as well be 2D? Or am I mistaken, and it is actually 2D? Because what I am understanding is that it would still be a 3D atom? Or is there something that can explain this better. Thanks.

hkmurakami 14y ago
Can anything exist in "2D" considering we live in a "3D" world?
- nsns 14y ago
  Rainbows?
  - Dylan16807 14y ago
    What? Rainbows are as thick as an entire cloud.
sliverstorm 14y ago
It is 2D the same way your drawings on a whiteboard with a white-erase marker are 2D. The ink left by your pen has 3 dimensions, yes, but the drawing is for all intents and purposes 2D. It's the same with graphene. The sheets are composed of 3D atoms, but the structure of a sheet is for all intents and purposes 2D.

diego_moita 14y ago

There is one thing that worries me about graphene. Its structure resembles me a lot the structure of cyclic aromatic hydrocarbons such as benzene. Now, we know that these compounds are extremely stable and resistant to heat, such as graphene. But we also know that, because of this, these compounds are extremely carcinogenic. Therefore my worries: wouldn't graphene also be a powerful carcinogenic? We had the same problem with asbestos and recently with nano-tubes, right? It was discovered they are carcinogenic precisely because they are extremely stable.

mercuryrising 14y ago
Asbestos is dangerous when it goes in, and when it comes out. The pipes in my house are insulated with Asbestos, but as long as I don't go break the insulation apart, I'll be fine. In many cases, Graphene or nanotubes will be used in a fixed form - they (hopefully) won't be used in aerosols. In something like an electronic component, the fullerenes would be locked in a plastic cage. You've probably inhaled graphene, nanotubes, and bucky balls if you have been around a bonfire.
Raphael 14y ago
Good point. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130115111551.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130115111551.ht...
aqme28 14y ago
Graphene is fundamentally the same thing as the stuff in your pencil. If graphene is carcinogenic, we've already been exposing generations of people to it.
- vicks 14y ago
  Most pencils are made of graphite which is a form of carbon.
  - DigitalJack 14y ago
    And graphene is made of carbon. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphene http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphene

bvcqw 14y ago

If only the government would give me a free grant of $1m!

sliverstorm 14y ago

At first I was worried this was more research in graphene transistors. Graphene transistors would be awesome, don't get me wrong, but building phones out of graphene seems both much more achievable, and a much more appropriate area of research for a company like Nokia!

bhauer 14y ago

Computer. Hello computer. A keyboard? How quaint. Seems better than transparent aluminum. Reality trumps 1980s science fiction soon? I can't wait.

Egregore 14y ago

Have anybody thought to use graphene in batteries?