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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

Researchers are working on combining graphene with hexagonal boron nitride [wikipedia.org] (known as "white graphene") in order to create flexible and transparent electronics [kurzweilai.net]:

A new era of electronics and even quantum devices could be ushered in with the fabrication of a virtually perfect single layer of “white graphene,” according to researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

[...] ORNL's Yijing Stehle, postdoctoral associate and lead author of a paper published in Chemistry of Materials and colleagues are working on combining graphene and boron nitride in a 2-D capacitor and fuel cell prototype that are "super thin" and also transparent.

With their recipe for white graphene, ORNL researchers hope to unleash the full potential of graphene as a conductor. By combining it with white graphene as a substrate, researchers believe they can make thinner, more-flexible multilayer electronic devices.

"Imagine batteries, capacitors, solar cells, video screens and fuel cells as thin as a piece of paper," she said.

For its part, graphene on a white-graphene substrate also has several thousand times higher electron mobility than using graphene on other substrates. That feature could enable data transfers that are much faster than what is available today.

A recent theoretical study led by Rice University proposed the use of white graphene to cool electronics (see "Why 'white graphene' structures are cool [kurzweilai.net]"). Stehle and colleagues have made high-quality layers of hexagonal boron nitride that support that study; they believe the material can be cost-effectively scaled up to large production volumes.

The Rice process consists of standard atmospheric pressure chemical vapor deposition with a similar furnace, temperature and time. But Stehle describes "a more gentle, controllable way to release the reactant into the furnace and figuring out how to take advantage of inner furnace conditions."

Synthesis of Hexagonal Boron Nitride Monolayer: Control of Nucleation and Crystal Morphology [acs.org] [abstract]

Original Submission