What is Graphene?
Graphene is amazing. It’s the strongest material in the world. It’s completely flexible, and it’s more conductive than copper. Graphene is a two-dimensional honeycomb arrangement of carbon atoms that is revolutionizing technology. The word “Graphene” refers to a single-layer sheet of hexagonally-arranged carbon atoms.
It was first studied in Manchester in 1947. The term graphene first appeared in 1987 to describe single sheets of graphite as a constituent of graphite intercalation compounds (GICs), conceptually a GIC is a crystalline salt of the intercalant and graphene.
Graphene Features:
- Strength – It is 200 times stronger than steel of the same thickness
- Made From – Graphene can be made from graphite, also known as ordinary pencil lead.
- Thinnest – It is the world’s thinnest material. It is one million times smaller than the diameter of a single human hair. It’s only one atom thick. Graphene is flexible.
- Free to move – Graphene has no band gap. A band gap is the gap between the energy of an electron when it is bound to an atom, and the so-called conduction band, where it is free to move around.
- Best at electricity – it can carry more electricity more efficiency, faster and with more precision than any other material. It can carry electricity at one million metres per second.
- Transparency – A sheet of graphene is naturally transparent. It is amazingly transparent, absorbing just 2.3 percent of light that lands on it, but if you have a blank sheet to compare it to, you can see that it is there.
- Elastic – Graphene stretches up to 20 percent of its length. And yet it is also the stiffest known material — even stiffer than diamond.
- Thermal conductivity – It is also the most conductive material in the world. Graphene also beats diamond in thermal conductivity.
- Impermeable – Graphene is also the most impermeable material ever discovered. Helium atoms can’t even get through graphene. This means it’s great as a gas detector.
- It’s expensive – Although graphene can be derived from pencil lead, the material is actually very expensive.Making graphene extremely useful in solar panels, it could also find applications in phones with touch screens.
Top 5 Graphene Researches
Porous, 3-D forms of Graphene developed at MIT can be 10 times as strong as steel but much lighter
A team of researchers at MIT has designed one of the strongest lightweight materials known, by compressing and fusing flakes of graphene, a two-dimensional form of carbon. This 3-D forms of Graphene material, a sponge-like configuration with a density of just 5 percent, can have a strength 10 times that of steel.
In its two-dimensional form, graphene is thought to be the strongest of all known materials. But researchers until now have had a hard time translating that two-dimensional strength into useful three-dimensional materials.
Graphene-coated solar panel generates Electricity from Rain Drops.
Scientists in China are developing a new kind of graphene coated solar panel that could be used to generate power from rain drops.By using a thin layer of highly conductive graphene, the solar cell could effectively harness power from rain. The salt contained in rain separates into ions (ammonium, calcium and sodium), making graphene and natural water a great combination for creating energy.
According to the scientists , this new technology could guide the design of advanced all-weather solar cells.i-e The new solar cell can be excited by incident light on sunny days and raindrops on rainy days.All-weather solar cells are promising in solving the energy crisis.
Graphene Light Bulbs can save 10% Energy
A dimmable LED bulb with a graphene-coated filament was designed at Manchester University, in UK. The super-strong material “Graphene” was discovered in 2004 by the researchers at the Manchester University, and they got 2010 Nobel prize in Physics for their Graphene discovery.
This Graphene light bulb is said to cut energy use by 10% and last longer owing to its conductivity. It is expected to be priced lower than current LED bulbs. Graphene is an allotrope of carbon in the form of a two-dimensional, atomic-scale, hexagonal lattice.
MIT creates Transparent, flexible solar cells using Graphene
Imagine a future in which solar cells are all around us — on windows and walls, cell phones, laptops, and more. A new flexible, transparent solar cell developed at MIT is bringing that future one step closer.
The device combines low-cost organic materials with electrodes of graphene, a flexible, transparent material made from inexpensive and abundant carbon sources. This advance in solar technology was enabled by a novel method of depositing a one-atom-thick layer of graphene onto the solar cell — without damaging nearby sensitive organic materials.
Until now, developers of transparent solar cells have typically relied on expensive, brittle electrodes that tend to crack when the device is flexed. The ability to use graphene instead is making possible truly flexible, low-cost, transparent solar cells that can turn virtually any surface into a source of electric power.
Graphene Sieve turns Seawater into Drinking water
A new research shows graphene can filter common salts from water to make it safe to drink. The new findings could lead to affordable desalination technology. Graphene-oxide membranes have attracted considerable attention as promising candidates for new filtration technologies.
Now the much sought-after development of making membranes capable of sieving common salts has been achieved. New research demonstrates the real-world potential of providing clean drinking water for millions of people who struggle to access adequate clean water sources. The new findings from a group of scientists at The University of Manchester were published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
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