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Graphene Might Not Be the Future After All

Rebecca Kutzer-Rice | Date: 02-04-11 | Comments

Although it has been heralded as the key to future electronics, including carbon microchips and flexible displays, graphene might not be so useful after all.

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Graphene Might Not Be the Future After All
Here at Smarter Technology, there's been a lot of buzz about the amazing promise of graphene, the extremely thin material made from sheets of carbon just one atom thick. Graphene is the material behind all that Nobel Prize controversy. Researchers claim it could lead the way for tiny carbon microchips and even make flexible electronics possible.

Unfortunately for developers, a new problem has arisen in the graphene craze. According to a recent study at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the material might not be as usable as hoped in real-world applications.

Graphene, once thought to be the future of electronics, might not be useful for real-world applications.

The major reason graphene is a standout material is that it allows its electrons to move quickly�up to 100 times faster than the carbon electrons in silicone. New research shows, though, that when graphene is layered on a substrate, electrons cannot move as quickly. Tiny hills and valleys that occur on the layered graphene's surface cause this speed reduction.

Because only layered graphene is useful in real-world applications, scientists fear the material may be ideal only when it is isolated from the environment.

"To get the most benefit from graphene, we have to understand fully how graphene's properties change when put in real-world conditions, such as part of a device where it is in contact with other kinds of materials," said NIST Fellow Joseph Stroscio, in a statement.

In constructing a normal semiconductor chip, researchers generally layer conducting, semiconducting and insulating materials. In the NIST experiment, the scientists layered graphene with another conducting material and an insulator. When the bottom conductor was charged, the graphene took on an equal and opposite charge.

With some help from a scanning tunneling microscope (STM), the researchers observed the graphene before and after its new charge. When uncharged, graphene's high electron mobility makes it look like a smooth sheet. When charged, however, this surface changed.

"What we found is that variations in the electrical potential of the insulating substrate are interrupting the orbits of the electrons in the graphene," explained NIST Fellow Nikolai Zhitenev in the statement, "creating wells where the electrons pool and reducing their mobility."

This mountainous effect becomes particularly prominent when the layered graphene is exposed to high magnetic fields, which causes the sluggish electrons to settle into isolated quantum-dots.

Next: Researchers Excited About Graphene's Use in Labs >>