Graphene: The New Material of the Future
The World’s First 2D Material
If I were to ask you what was the strongest thing on Earth was made of, what would you say? Steel? Diamond? Love? What if I told you that the strongest material on Earth, the things that the future is made of, can be found on the tip of your pencil?
Well first, to understand what makes the stuff in your pencil the most strongest material on Earth, you have to understand what is strength. Generally, there are three different ways to classify a material; by it’s toughness, by it’s hardness, and by it’s strength. Toughness is measured by how much energy a material can absorb, and hardness is measured by it’s resistance to permanent change. Meanwhile strength is measured by a materials ability to withstand non-permanent changes.
So what is the worlds toughest material? There are many different contenders, including diamonds, a plastic material called dyneemer, and even metal glass! However, the one that beats the rest, is graphite! More specifically a one atom layer thick sheet of graphite that’s known as graphene. It’s 200 times more stronger than steel! In contrast, if there were a sheet of graphene as big as a piece of paper, you’d need more than six blue whales to rip the piece of paper.
Graphene was a material first theorized back in the mid 20th century, by P.R. Wallace. In fact when it was theorized, he didn’t even believe it possible to be synthesized; he only theorized graphene to attempt to compare with graphite. It wasn’t until almost 50 years later that graphene was made, when two scientists Andre Geim, and Konstantin Novoselov were playing around with a piece of graphene and scotch tape, that they made graphene. All they did was grab a piece of graphite (in rock form, not pencil), stick it onto a piece of tape, put two sticky parts together, and then pull apart. They’d repeat that until all that was left was an atom thick layer of graphite — graphene!
So what makes graphene so unique? Well the same reason why carbon is a key element in life on earth. Carbon’s chemical structure allows it to form millions of unique compounds, with different amounts of atoms, and different shapes. Carbon’s special properties can also allow it to form into honeycomb shapes. These honeycombs make the graphene surprisingly strong!
Besides a plain sheet of graphene (because lets face it, a sheet of graphene is pretty hard to work with), since discovering it, scientists have been working to get graphene into several different forms the most prominent and having the most potential in the near future being 3-D graphene, graphene aerogel, buckypaper and graphene oxide. All of these materials have vastly different properties as well!
On the weaker side, Graphene aerogel is the lightest material on earth, and while not being as strong, as some of it’s other iterations, is very flexible, conductive, compressive, and absorbent. The material could be used to clean up oil spills.
3-D graphene is ten times as strong as graphene, but is more than 95 percent less dense, and is able to be 3-D printed. The material also has a property in which the thinner the graphene is built, the more stable it is. Scientists have started looking into using 3-D graphene in building bridges, cars, and even filtration systems.
Buckypaper, made from compressed carbon tubes is a flame retardant, and extremely conductive material. Also, being one of, if not the strongest materials on Earth, buckypaper is 500 times stronger than steel. Potential uses include being used for a new generation of smartphone screens, batteries or even help to insulate materials to fire.
Finally, graphene oxide is alike all the previous materials mentioned — albeit far more scaled down. Graphene oxide, while having most of the properties associated with graphene, is not graphene. It’s actually a layer of graphene bonded with oxygen. Without the pure honeycomb structure, graphene oxide is inferior to all other iterations of graphene, in terms of strength and conductivity. There are some positives to graphene oxide however; being bonded with oxygen, graphene oxide is water soluble, and it’s far more cheaper to produce.
So will you see any graphene batteries in the near future? Some new graphene cars perhaps? Probably not, as it’s extremely expensive and difficult to make, costing 100$ per gram to make. This is due to the difficulties of shaving a piece of graphite down to an atom thick layer of carbon, and then reforming it into whatever new material is needed. It’s simply not feasible to create graphene in a large capacity at the moment. Don’t be discouraged though, as scientists are always making new innovations, in fact as of June 30th 2017 scientists have just created a new use for graphene, for dialysis machines! So who knows, in the coming years, you may be watching youtube on your new graphene screened Iphone 9.
