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The 21st Century Game Changer – Innovations from Super Material Graphene
Rich Cooper July 8, 2013
The world is standing on the precipice of revolutionary innovations thanks to a new material that seems straight
out of science fiction. Stemming from a relatively simple yet vastly
important discovery, scientists, inventors and businesses around the
world are experimenting with the first two-dimensional substance—
graphene. It is 100 times stronger than steel, and it is also
simultaneously the thinnest, most flexible and stretchable, and most
conductive substance ever seen. With such a chain of superlatives,
scientists and inventors are justifiably excited about the possible
applications, which seem limitless.
The University of Manchester scientists who discovered (more like, “created”) graphene, Andrei Geim and
Kostya Novoselov, won a Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010 for their experiments. Their discovery of the singleatom-thick carbon crystal material, however, was just the beginning. It is as if the world is a 16-year-old with a
newly minted driver’s license, and we have just been given all the parts to a Ferrari but without the assembly
manual. If we can figure out how to put it together and how it works, we will soon be speeding down the
highway to groundbreaking applications.
Because graphene is such a versatile material, companies and innovators are looking at a range of ways it can be
applied to improving current products and developing new ones. Here are a few in the works so far. More are on
the way.
An answer to drinking water scarcity: One of the major challenges facing the world is a shortage of fresh
water. One method of creating drinking water is desalinating seawater; however, this is an expensive process
and available technologies make desalination an unviable solution to drinking water scarcity. That is about to
change.
In graphene, the carbon atoms are arranged in a chicken wire-like mesh, forming a natural sieve. The space
between the atoms is small enough to block the molecules that make salt, but incredibly, water molecules can
pass through. A graphene filter would allow us to quickly turn seawater into drinking water. The U.S. tech giant
Lockheed Martin Corp. has plans to introduce a prototype graphene filter by the end of the year. Its desalination
membrane, called Perforene, could be used as replacement for filters in current reverse osmosis plants, which
turn seawater into fresh water. The graphene-based membrane could have other applications as well, such as in
healthcare, used to improve dialysis.
A cheaper approach to solar energy: Current solar cells are expensive and rely on a limited supply of natural
materials. Tellurium, for example, is the second scarcest byproduct metal in the world, next to gold, and there
are only two known major deposits—in China and Mexico. As these kind of rare materials are used, they
become increasingly scarce and therefore expensive, making solar panels an ever-more costly method of
gathering energy. Because of its near-perfect conductive properties, graphene could play a critical part in the
next generation of solar cells.
For solar power, the trick is to capture sunlight and as efficiently as possible, convert and transfer that energy
(such as to a battery). While graphene offers an unparalleled capability to conduct electricity, it is not a great
photoreceptor. Looking for a way around this, scientists in Taiwan recently coated graphene in chlorophyll, the
organic molecule that plants use to take in sunlight and convert it to useable energy.
Lead researcher Hei-Hua Wang said of the innovation: “In our hybrid material, the chlorophyll absorbs the light
from the sun and converts it into energy; the graphene, on the other hand, can transport the electric charges
generated by the illumination.”
Because carbon is so bountiful, the cost of a solar panel would be governed by the cost of manufacturing and
not the availability of raw materials. It if were economically feasible to cover every rooftop with solar panels, it
would upend how the world generates energy.
A new breed of super computers: Because graphene is a natural conducer of electricity, it has been targeted as a
potential replacement for silicon in computer chips. The computing advancements of the past several decades
have largely rested on the ability of companies to put more transistors on one chip, allowing today’s
smartphones to dramatically outperform the first computers of the 1960s. Yet, there is a limit to how many
transistors can fit on one chip.
One of graphene’s amazing properties is that as electrons pass through it, they lose their mass. Moving through
silicon transistors, electrons have mass, meaning they must be propelled forward with a boost of energy, such as
from a battery. In graphene, electrons can bounce around like a photon, moving 100 times faster than in current
transistors. In 2011, IBM demonstrated the potential for graphene to be used in this way, though it will still be
some time before the world says goodbye to the silicon microchip.
More recently, researchers discovered graphene’s usefulness in supercapacitors—effectively a lithium-ion
battery that takes much less time to charge. Imagine charging your smartphone in five minutes or less. It could
revolutionize power storage and put an end to constantly seeking an outlet to charge portable devices whose
batteries never last long enough.
Adding flexibility to smart devices: As well as an excellent conducer of electricity, graphene is flexible and
transparent. Innovators are looking for ways to put these properties to use in consumer electronics, like
smartphones. Some early ideas include flexible, ultra-thin smartphones. Samsung and other companies
are already experimenting with touchscreen devices that offer a lot of flexibility, literally. Researchers in South
Korea recently produced a television-sized continuous layer of graphene. Paired with a flexible sheet of
bendable, transparent polyester, this is a major step towards creating flexible digital screens. Consumers might
eventually be able to roll up their phone and put it in their pocket or even wrap it around their wrist.
A potentially more immediate benefit of graphene for smart devices is that it could replace one of the key
ingredients in touchscreens. In current touch-enabled technology, screens are coated in indium-tin-oxide (IDO),
itself a great conducer of electricity. When you drag your finger across your smartphone, your body heat rushes
through the IDO, which the phone then interprets to figure out your finger’s position on the screen. One
problem, however, is that the critical ingredient—a metal called indium—is in short supply, growing shorter as
more touch-devices are brought to market. That has dramatically increased the cost of the essential ingredient,
and the future supply of indium is uncertain. Enter graphene, which can perform the same function, but because
it is made of carbon and not some ultra-rare metal, it offers a cheap alternative to indium that will be available
indefinitely.
These are just a few of the many ways graphene’s potential is being explored, and there are myriad applications
that have not yet been invented. Because this is new territory, graphene production is still relatively expensive,
which prohibits many commercial applications. As manufacturing technology improves, however, the cost will
drop. While it may be a decade or more before we see graphene becomes as common as plastic (the
20th century’s super material), there is no doubt this simple 2-D sheet of carbon is going to change the world.
"The 21st Century Game Changer – Innovations from Super Material Graphene." U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation. 8 July 2013.
Web. 12 Mar. 2015.
Nanotechnology: Engineering Materials for a Better 21st Century
Meng Qiao, Xiyun Liu and Lei Zhang DOI : 10.3844/ajnsp.2014.1.2
American Journal of Nanotechnology Volume 5, Issue 1 Pages 1-2
Today, we are living in the midst of a technological revolution, where
nanotechnology is demonstrating a greater commitment to make people’s
everyday lives better. The aim of nanotechnology is to create new materials
with desired properties by engineering their nanoscale structures and
components.
One of the most important impacts of nanotechnology is in medical diagnosis and treatment. Cardiovascular
diseases such as heart disease and stroke are the leading causes of death and disability among men and women in
almost every nation. There is a constant need for noninvasive, inexpensive and fast tools to diagnose these
diseases. A recent progress is featured by the development of a test that used injected bionanomaterials to find
diseased tissues and produce biomarkers in the urine. Detection of these biomarkers can be done within minutes
using paper strips similar to a home pregnancy test. These bionanomaterials are composed of nanoparticles
conjugated to cleavable ligand-encoded reporters. The reporters are engineered so that can be detected by
sandwich immunoassays directly from the urine.
Among all diseases, cancer is still a major threat to human health this century. A valuable benefit of
nanotechnology in cancer diagnostics is the development of nanosensors that can be used to detect cancer
biomarkers with high sensitivity and low detection limit. In the case of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) detection
for prostate cancer diagnosis, a novel plasmonic nanosensor based on the enzyme-guided coating of silver
nanocrystals on gold nanostars is capable of detecting PSA down to 10-18 g mL−1 in whole serum. Label-free
nanosensor technology for caner biomarker detection has also stimulated intense research.
Concerning nanotechnological applications in the treatment of cancer, the use of nanostructured materials in
image-guided surgery for tumors is a forefront area. Though being the most efficient method to cure cancer, the
completeness of tumor removal is still dependent on a surgeon’s experience. To objectively delineate tumor
margins during surgery, various kinds of nanomaterials have shown their usefulness as an imaging label to guide
the surgery. A recent example accurately determined the brain tumor margins in living mice using a delicately
designed triple-modality (magnetic resonance imaging-photoacoustic imaging-Raman imaging) nanoparticle.
This, together with related works, gives researchers a decent idea of what to expect in human trials.
The application of nanotechnology in industry has also taken important steps. Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR),
also called tertiary oil recovery, aims to maximize oil recovery through extracting trapped oil from mature
reservoirs. There is a strong thirst for new innovative materials to make EOR efforts more successful. It is
noteworthy that a type of polymeric nanoparticle with the commercial name Bright Water has been field-tested
in different oil reservoirs. These polymeric nanoparticles are thermal sensitive and could remarkably expand in
volume within the reservoir, thus blocking the pore throats and redirecting the injected fluid to oil-rich zones.
Polymer-coated nanoparticles are an emerging class of materials that could offer a wealth of advantages for EOR
due to improved solubility and stability, easier transport through porous media and greater stabilization of foams
and emulsions. Other than coating with a polymer, surfactant-coated nanoparticles have also attracted
considerable attention among researchers. The idea of using foam to reduce gas mobility during gas flooding has
been proven effective in improving reservoir sweep efficiency. However, the inherent lack of long-term stability
of foams limits the application of this technique. As a viable solution to this problem, modification of partially
hydrophobic SiO2 nanoparticles with sodium dodecyl sulfate, a widely used surfactant, has taken a positive role
in increasing the foam stability as a result of the adsorption of the particles on the bubble surface.
Molecular Deposition Film (MDF), sometimes described as a nanometer film, is another class of materials that
are of current interest in EOR. MDF is capable of adhering to the rock surface due to electrostatic forces. The
formation of this nanometer-thin film alters the properties of the rock surface from lipophilic to hydrophilic. This
helps to separate the oil from the rock, enabling a more efficient displacement and recovery of the oil. It may be
mentioned that MDF can hardly reduce the oil-water interfacial tension. Thus, a combined use of MDF and other
flooding techniques would be a reasonable EOR practice.
As an ongoing research endeavor, nanosensors have been actively investigated as a tool to acquire oil reservoir
information. Saudi Aramco, in collaboration with academic institutions, has developed nanomaterials that can
sense real-time factors within the reservoir and transmit information such as the reservoir pressure, temperature
and the fluid type to the operators when coming out with the oil from the well. Though the oil reservoir poses a
challenging environment for this sensor technology, the development of these nanosensors shows a great prospect
and is worthy of continued research attention.
Taken together, nanotechnology is a rapidly growing interdisciplinary technology with enormous potential for
human health and industries. As a sustainable economic driver, nanotechnology can promise compelling social
benefits. Despite of these advantages, the practical applications of this revolutionary technology are still a
challenge.
For example, nanoparticles can agglomerate to form larger particles during the EOR process, compromising their
function. Extensive and intensive research is apparently needed to overcome the shortcomings associated with
the applications of nanotechnology. Nonetheless, the future of nanotechnology is bright. We would like to end
this Editorial by quoting Walt Disney’s “If you can dream it, you can do it.” With the aid of nanotechnology, the
dream of scientists to engineer new functional materials for a better 21st century is closer to a reality.
M. Qiao, X. Liu and L. Zhang, 2014. Nanotechnology: Engineering Materials for a Better 21st Century.
Am. J. Nanotechnol., 5: 1-2.
Article #2: "10 Awesome Facts About Nanotechnology." YouTube. YouTube. Web. 12 Mar. 2015.