Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Ultrathin carbon honoured

Oct 6, 2010

NEW YORK - IT IS the thinnest and strongest material known to mankind - no thicker than a single atom and 100 times tougher than steel. Could graphene be the next plastic? Maybe so, says one of two scientists who won a Nobel Prize on Tuesday for isolating and studying it.

Faster computers, lighter airplanes, transparent touch screens - the list of potential uses runs on. Some scientists say we can't even imagine what kinds of products might be possible with the substance, which hides in ordinary pencil lead and first was extracted using a piece of Scotch tape.

Two Russian-born researchers shared the physics Nobel for their groundbreaking experiments with graphene, which is a sheet of carbon atoms joined together in a pattern that resembles chicken wire.

Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov of the University of Manchester in England used Scotch tape to rip off flakes of graphene from a chunk of graphite, the stuff of pencil leads. That achievement, reported just six years ago, opened the door to studying what scientists say should be a versatile building block for electronics and strong materials.

'It has all the potential to change your life in the same way that plastics did,' Geim, 51, a Dutch citizen, told The Associated Press. 'It is really exciting.' Michael Strano, a chemist at MIT, said trying to predict its uses would be 'folly ... we can't even imagine the uses we're going to find.' But he and others have some ideas. Graphene's electrical properties mean it might make for faster transistors, key components of electronic circuits, and so lead to better computers, the Nobel committee says. As a single layer of carbon atoms it's tiny, which could pay off in more powerful cell phones, several scientists said.

And since it's practically transparent, it could lead to see-through touch screens and maybe solar cells, the committee says. It might also pay off for big TV screens. -- AP

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