As graphene is getting involved in many types of human actions, the price of it is getting more reachable. In several years, bulk graphene prices can be lower and lower, below the price of silicon. This could enable graphene to get massively into all markets which are being dominated by silicon in these days. These markets involve computing, chip manufacturing, solar cells, sensors and the others.
Graphene may supplant many other materials as well
Graphene will be used for applications which the other materials cannot be involved, be it future flexible smartphones as silicon is brittle and would break upon bending. And not only for these reason has graphene given many competitive solution.
There is no wonder that the global market for graphene reached 9 billion dollars by 2012 with most sales in the semiconductor, battery energy, electronics or composites industries. And the future looks even brighter for companies like MST nanoLinks to an external site. and others that deal with graphene and other nanomaterials.
What is graphene structure about?
This material can be characterized as a single atomic layer of graphite and abundant mineral that is an allotrope of carbon which is made up of very tightly bonded carbon atoms organised into a hexagonal lattice. The special thing about graphene is its sp2 hybridisation and really thin atomic thickness which enables it to break so many records in electricity, strength and heat conduction.
Carbon fiber and its short history
Graphene use is not such a young technology so its price is not too high. One should bear in mind that carbon fiber was invented in the 1950´s, however, its use didn’t take off for another 40 years. Nowadays it can be used in advanced composite materials and it even was able to get to applications which were not possible with the other materials. Graphene has a lot of different properties, for example it is two hundred times stronger than the strongest steel. At the same it is also conducts heat and electricity very well and it is also nearly transparent. It has a huge and nonlinear diamagnetic which is larger than graphite and could be levitated by neodymium magnets.
The properties of graphene
Scientist studied the graphene for many years, for example for many centuries it has been used in pencils and other small graphite applications. Originally, it used to be observed in electron microscopes in 1962. After years this was discovered again, isolated and also characterized in 2004 by Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov at the University of Manchester.
Until then, it was theoretically believed that two dimensional compounds could not exist due to thermal instability when it is separated. However, after being isolated the scientist were sure that it was possible. This resulted in the two winning the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010 for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene. The history of grapheme is explained in the article hereLinks to an external site..
Electronic Properties
One of the properties of graphenes is the fact that graphene is a zero overlap semimetal with really high electrical conductivity. Carbon atoms have a total of 6 electrons – two of them are being located in the inner shell and the other in the outer one.
These outer ones in an individual carbon atom are great for chemical bonding, but in graphene, every single atom is connected to three other carbon atoms on the two dimensional plane, one electron is leaving freely available in the third dimension for electronic conduction.
These highly-mobile electrons are named pi electrons and are located above and below the graphene sheet. Those pi orbitals overlap and help enhance the carbon to carbon bonds in graphene. So the electronic properties of graphene are thanks to the bonding and antibonding of these pi orbitals. Graphene can be also solution for cheap cleaning of water which I have found in HERELinks to an external site..
