A Nobel Prize taped out? This is graphene, the “King of New Materials” in the 21st century

Author : Jazmyn

Update time : 2024-03-13 16:49:23

Can you believe it? Someone took a piece of transparent tape and stuck it on the graphite, then peeled it off and stuck it on. After repeated operations, he was able to participate in the Nobel selection and even win the award! Yes, this is how two British professors discovered graphene and won the Nobel Prize in Physics.

Two British professors stuck graphite on tape and then pulled out "graphene," which caused a sensation. Graphene, a new material, is also known as the "king of new materials" in the 21st world. The refill in our commonly used pencils is graphite. When graphite is stripped down to a single-layer structure, it becomes graphene.

This material is arranged in a honeycomb lattice structure and consists of just one layer of atoms, making it the thinnest and strongest material ever. Its thickness is only 0.33nm. What is the concept? The thickness of an ordinary A4 paper is about 0.1mm. If you want graphene with the same thickness as this paper, you need 300,000 layers of graphene stacked together! In addition, graphene is very light, with only 0.77mg per square meter. A piece of graphene covering the entire football field weighs less than 1g. Its tensile strength is 130GPa, about 200 times stronger than structural steel! At the same time, graphene is also very flexible and can be stretched to 20% of its original size without breaking. Helium atoms cannot penetrate the graphene layer, making graphene highly impermeable to most gases and liquids.

Graphene is also an excellent conductor of electricity, with a resistance 35% lower than copper. In addition, graphene is also a better thermal conductor than copper. The thermal conductivity at room temperature is almost five times that of copper, and graphene also has a light transmittance of 97.3%.

These strong mechanical properties of graphene, combined with its thin and light properties, make graphene very suitable for making composite materials. Graphene materials are used as large as sports cars, airplanes, spaceships, etc., small as badminton rackets, snowboards, bicycle wheels and frames, sports glasses, bulletproof vests, etc. Additionally, because graphene is so thin that electrons can travel through it at the speed of light, computers could be thousands of times faster by replacing silicon-based transistors. Graphene has high thermal conductivity, which also makes graphene a good choice for heat dissipation in computer devices. For example, the nanoshell of the iPhone uses a graphene film, which can quickly dissipate excess heat inside the phone. Domestic Huawei mobile phones also use this technology; graphene makes it possible to manufacture circuits on flexible plastics. In addition, graphene can also show its talents in the field of new energy.

It is relatively easy to obtain graphene. Use tape to stick to the graphite core of a pencil and then tear it apart to obtain multiple layers of graphite. After countless repeated operations, you can finally obtain graphite containing only one layer of atoms. Of course, this method of producing graphene is relatively crude and is called "mechanical exfoliation." It is only suitable for producing graphene samples in the laboratory and cannot be produced on a large scale in industrial manufacturing. However, chemical vapor deposition can produce large amounts of graphene. Putting a gas such as methane into a closed container and heating it on a substrate creates a graphene layer. Another method is through Joule thermal flash evaporation technology. The capacitor bank is discharged under high pressure, which can increase the temperature of carbon-containing materials to more than 2700°C in less than 100 milliseconds. This method can produce high-quality products of graphene.

So far, the manufacturing cost of graphene is still relatively high, and large-scale production still requires a lot of effort. Still, the popularity of this material is just around the corner!

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