New 'miracle' material - BBC piece

homercles

So apparently graphene is the next big thing and will see in a new age of development and technological evolution. According to the clip on the BBC website, the real excitement is in what it might do for computing. Pah, I want to know when they're giving a big load of it to the bike guys to build me a super light, super quick, super intelligent wonder machine. Who's in? The petition starts here.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15161565

snailracer

The thing about pure CF, graphene, carbon nanotubes, diamonds or any other allotrope of carbon, is that they are not particularly "strong" materials in real-life structural applications because they lack toughness.

The only reason CF is useful is because, as 1-d carbon strings, it is easily composited with resin, which gives it necessary toughness at the cost of pure strength (and CF composite is only a fraction of the "laboratory" strength of pure CF).

Diamond is also superstrong, but because it is a 3-d carbon structure without gaps, there is no practical way of impregnating it with resin to overcome it's intrinsic lack of toughness.

Graphene, as a 2-d carbon sheet, lies somewhere between CF and diamond in terms if it's ability to be composited. Seeing as even easy-to-composite CF is still considered less tough than most other practical materials, I'm not holding my breath.

redddraggon

I got a phone call from my Mum last night about this like it was big news or something.

They are just across the road from me, and I'm due to be visiting them in the next couple of months because they have some equipment we are buying and we want to see it in action.