Graphene’s discoverers were awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics for their find. And it’s no wonder; the material is 200 times stronger than steel, and many times thinner than a human hair. It has the potential to accelerate internet speeds by 100 times, and recharge a lithium-ion battery 10 times as fast as a normal battery.
The new Strongest Material Ever is mostly carbon, the same building block in diamond and buckytubes. The difference with graphene is it lays neatly in a sheet one molecule thick, like ultra-thin plastic wrap.
- Engineers Make Electrical Contact to Graphene on It’s 1-Atom-Thick Edge – potential applications are incredible, from vertically structured transistors, tunneling based devices and sensors, photoactive hybrid materials, to flexible and transparent electronics
- Graphene and Perskovite Are a Winning Combination for Photovoltaics – researchers have developed a photovoltaic system in which graphene and titanium dioxide combine to serve as the charge collector while perovskite acts as the sunlight absorber.
- Graphene-treated rubber bands used as inexpensive body motion sensors. They are stretchy, and electrically conductive. If they’re wired up to a power source and then stretched as the result of even a subtle movement, there’s a detectable effect on the current flowing through them.
Engineering ideas
- Artificial graphene could outperform the real thing – Graphene is truly a 21st-century wonder material, finding use in everything from solar cells to batteries to tiny antennas. Now, however, a group of European research institutes have joined forces to create a graphene knock-off, that could prove to be even more versatile.
engineering 4 kids 