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posted by martyb on Saturday December 01 2018, @10:21AM   Printer-friendly
from the garbage-in-garbage-out dept.

Study unlocks full potential of 'supermaterial' graphene

New research reveals why the "supermaterial" graphene has not transformed electronics as promised, and shows how to double its performance and finally harness its extraordinary potential.

Graphene is the strongest material ever tested. It's also flexible, transparent and conducts heat and electricity 10 times better than copper.

After graphene research won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2010 it was hailed as a transformative material for flexible electronics, more powerful computer chips and solar panels, water filters and bio-sensors. But performance has been mixed and industry adoption slow.

Now a study published in Nature Communications identifies silicon contamination as the root cause of disappointing results and details how to produce higher performing, pure graphene.

The RMIT University team led by Dr Dorna Esrafilzadeh and Dr Rouhollah Ali Jalili inspected commercially-available graphene samples, atom by atom, with a state-of-art scanning transition electron microscope.

"We found high levels of silicon contamination in commercially available graphene, with massive impacts on the material's performance," Esrafilzadeh said.

[...] The article "Silicon as a ubiquitous contaminant in graphene derivatives with significant impact on device performance" is published in Nature Communications: DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-07396-3


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 01 2018, @05:33PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 01 2018, @05:33PM (#768670)

    There's still lots of money to be made off the current fabrication processes and their licensing so the Intel of the world have no incentive to push the tech forwards.

    Say what? Intel - or anyone else - who gets the first functional patents using graphene will have a foundation upon which to "enhance" their own patents in the near future (thus extending the patent's lifespan). Also, first patents have the first shot at licensing those patents to others who cannot compete in graphene R&D. Plus, not all graphene developments that result from chip R&D will be limited to chip production.

    Intel can, and will, keep selling their existing technology for years to come. But have a leading-edge advantage in the graphene technology patent race is money in the bank.