World's First Single-Atom-Thick Fabric 390
neutron_p writes "Researchers at The University of Manchester have made the world's first single-atom-thick fabric, which reveals the existence of a new class of materials and may lead to computers made from a single molecule. They call it graphene, because it's 'webbed' by extraction of individual planes of carbon atoms from graphite crystal. The nanofabric belongs to the family of fullerene molecules, which were discovered during the last two decades, but is the first two-dimensional fullerene."
Can it cut things? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Can it cut things? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Can it cut things? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Can it cut things? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Can it cut things? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:conductivity and refraction (Score:4, Informative)
There is a relationship between dielectric constant (not exacty conductivity) and refractive index. The dielectric constant involves the ability of a material to attenuate an electric field, through the dipole moment and polarizability of the material. Light (or more exactly, electromagnetic radiation) is just alternating electric and magnetic fields.
>2) Index of refraction is the ratio of the speed of light in vacuum to the speed of light in the material. As a result, you always have a number greater than 1. What does a negative I-of-R mean physically? The speed of light in the material would have to be negative? Would it reflect the beam rather than refract it?
If you shine light into a pool of water at a 45 degree angle to the vertical, the beam bends at a >45 degree angle. If the same pool of water had a negative refractive index, the beam would bend at a 45 degree angle.
One interesting thing about the material described is that graphite is about 1000X as conductive parallel to the sheets as perpendicular to them. Light with its electric field in the plane of the sheet would see an almost metallic surface, while light polarized perpendicular to it would just see a layer of carbon atoms. It might make a really efficient thin film polarizer.
Re:conductivity and refraction (Score:5, Informative)
Reflection of radio waves has to do with electrons in the material that move because of the electrical field of the radio waves. Conductivity obviously has to do with how well electrons can move. You can regard light to some extent as an high-frequency version of radio waves, if you ignore the quantum effects that become important at those frequencies.
2) Index of refraction is the ratio of the speed of light in vacuum to the speed of light in the material. [...] What does a negative I-of-R mean physically?
I think the parent poster was incorrect. The index of refraction is complex, i.e., has an imaginary component. That is a mathematical trick; if you describe a wave as
then the imaginary component in n will cause the wave to dampen out while propagating.A refractive index can actually be smaller than 1, which means that light propagates faster than the speed of light (can happen with X rays). This does not violate Einstein's laws, since what counts is how fast you can transmit information and you can't transmit information with a constant wave.
Re:Can it cut things? (Score:5, Informative)
The fact that this stuff is only one molecule thick is much more persuasive. In fact, very thin bubbles are completely transparent to light, because the light cannot refract if the film is less than about a wavelength thick. Since molecules (chains and polymers get a little tricky, of course) are generally much, much smaller than a visible wavelength, this stuff will probably be virtually invisible, unless, as another poster pointed out, it's extremely highly conductive (which would cause a skin-depth effect and probably do more complicated things to light).
Re:Can it cut things? (Score:3, Interesting)
What am I missing here?
Re:Can it cut things? (Score:5, Informative)
You're right, in that absorption of all colors but, say, blue by some object will make that object look blue. BUT one may also separate colors into different portions of an object -- the light of different colors has simply ended up in different spots, but hasn't been permanently absorbed or attenuated (as in interference colors in bubbles, or oil slicks, etc.). One way to obtain this is to simply reflect light multiple times off of two parallel (or nearly parallel) surfaces, as in a bubble or a pane of glass. Very little of the light is really absorbed, just shuttled from place to place.
I think that we're probably just thinking of different "complementary" pictures of light -- you're focusing (agh!) on the photon, discrete picture, and I'm focusing on the continuum, wavelike picture. I'm essentially trying to scale down what I know about wave mechanics to spatial regimes where those wave mechanics get pretty strange (due to the wavelength vs. molecular size discrepancy). I think you're applying some scattering theory (or at least some good intuition) to the problem. Of course, if we're both careful, we should end up with exactly the same answer.
So isn't this subject to the same inherent photon-manipulating characteristics as other carbon atoms?
Oh, absolutely. However, one must recognize that things can scatter light in very strange ways depending on their spatial relationships to each other. Carbon atoms in graphite and diamond are identical, but their locations relative to each other make all the difference between opaque grey, and transparent brilliance. Same with water vapor in the air (humidity in the air doesn't scatter light by itself, but get those water molecules clustered together in big enough drops -- say, in a cloud -- and they scatter light quite effectively).
Basically, what I'm getting at is that you have to have some semblance of order on a scale comparable to the wavelength of light you want to interact with, to ever scatter that light. Because this "cloth" is so thin, I doubt it'll interact with the light much at all, unless you have wavefronts incident on it at grazing angles -- then you have the chance of the light interacting with it over larger spatial domains, and getting some scattering.
I dunno. Time to look at boobies. They scatter quite well. Especially when they hear geek-talk.
Re:Can it cut things? (Score:3, Informative)
No, that's just what a lot of physics classes teach. ;) Atoms can only absorb discrete frequencies of radiation and wouldn't provide the continuous responce across large parts of the EM spectrum like we see in the index of refraction of materials. The materials actually cause an effectivfe change in the permitivity and permeability of the space they occupy which results in the change in the speed of light (c = 1/sqrt(
Re:Can it cut things? (Score:5, Informative)
I agree with your point that this material certainly shouldn't be treated like it has a bulk index of refraction--a monatomic layer is definitely in the realm of weird quantum effects.
It should be noted that this system can't be treated like distinct atoms, however. It's effectively one giant molecule, with a very complicated electron cloud surrounding a layer of nuclei. In the ideal case where this system is perfectly flat, you (er, a solid state physics grad student) can probably come up with a reasonable idea of what its absorption and emission spectra look like. (I wouldn't be surprised if a creature like this showed not insignificant fluorescence.) On the other hand, as soon as you start to bend this stuff, or introduce small defects, or do anything else to it, it gets a lot more complicated. You get a whole pile of nonlinear effects, and I wouldn't be surprised of there were broadband absorption. (Actually, that absorption could be used to tell you all about the stresses and defects in a particular sample of the material. Can I have my patent now?)
Re:Can it cut things? (Score:5, Interesting)
Can you keep it stiff? Paper will cut you if you can keep it stiff enough to slide your finger along the edge with a little pressure, but silk cloth of the same thickness won't because it isn't stiff.
If you can figure out a way to make it rigid, you'll have a nifty new razor blade.
Re:Can it cut things? (Score:4, Funny)
Well, I try. It's really up to her though.
Great (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Can it cut things? (Score:5, Interesting)
Nope. It's not rigid.
But.. if you could add a layer on top of that layer, juxtaposed by the minimal amount (half of a ring, see this picture [benbest.com] of graphite crystal structure), and then add another layer, and another..
Then you could form a 'perfectly sharp' knife.
I'm not sure how durable it'd be though, because the inter-layer bonds in graphite are rather weak.
Re:Can it cut things? (Score:2)
Re:Can it cut things? (Score:5, Informative)
That's so...stone age. Seriously :-) Obsidian can be fasioned into blades with an edge that's only 1 atom thick (I've seen pictures of an electron micrograph in a book, I wish I could find some online to post). Obsidian in fact is used in some cases as surgeon's scalpels because it can be made so much sharper than steel.
Re:Can it cut things? (Score:4, Funny)
Whoo Hoo! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Whoo Hoo! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Whoo Hoo! (Score:5, Funny)
In other news (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Whoo Hoo! (Score:2, Funny)
Reminds me of Seinfeld (Score:5, Funny)
Elaine: How'd you know you cut it?
Kramer: I guess I just assumed...
Re:Reminds me of Seinfeld (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Reminds me of Seinfeld (Score:5, Funny)
Proof: Assume a cow that is topologically equivalent to a Klein bottle [wolfram.com]. The rest is left as an exercise for the butcher.
Finally! (Score:3, Funny)
Would someone be allergic to it? (Score:5, Interesting)
Not to mention that consumption of the material could lead to carcinogenic effects.
Before we start throwing around phrases like "wonder material" and "the future is now", perhaps we should take a closer look at the health risks involved in making/using these practically invisible materials.
Re:Would someone be allergic to it? (Score:5, Funny)
Secondly, if you are eating fabric on a regular basis, cancer risk might be the least of your problems.
Re:Would someone be allergic to it? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Would someone be allergic to it? (Score:5, Funny)
Does munching carpet count?
Sorry, I realize there are a million geeks tilting their heads like confused dogs right about now.
Re:Would someone be allergic to it? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Would someone be allergic to it? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Would someone be allergic to it? (Score:5, Informative)
The material is made of carbon atoms. I don't think you'll find many people allergic to carbon, since most everyone I've met has been "carbon-based".
However, if this material breaks down into tiny, airborne pieces, it could by-pass the lung's filtering system and lodge itself in the tissue.
Black lung disease [wikipedia.org] is caused by coal dust, and coal is nothing more then carbon and hydrocarbons, both basic biological building blocks for life on earth. Its just that the coal dust gets lodged in the lungs, and the body can't remove it. The irritation then causes problems.
CO (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess that's why carbon monoxide is so safe.
Re:Would someone be allergic to it? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Would someone be allergic to it? (Score:5, Informative)
Look it up. [reference.com]
People are allergic to either the dander, saliva or urine of cats.
sure sure, off-topic, but correct ;)
Re:Would someone be allergic to it? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Would someone be allergic to it? (Score:5, Interesting)
Something that small and fine could possibly become airborne and eventually irritate allergic responses.
Nah, it has to be micron-scale (1000x larger) for your lungs to recognize it as foreign, and eject it. Like it does with dust.
Not that that's a good thing. People get asbestosis and silicosis for just this reason. Sharp particles that are beneath detection become embedded. And if they aren't broken down and stay sharp, they cut, cut, cut at the cellular level for the rest of your life.
As for graphene becoming airborne, lodging in the lungs, and never breaking down, who knows?
Re:Would someone be allergic to it? (Score:2, Insightful)
Opps - didn't read your last sentence - yes it may be a problem. Are we not scientists? Do we not believe in actual data?
Experimentalists of the world unite!
Re:Would someone be allergic to it? (Score:2)
Re:Would someone be allergic to it? (Score:3, Insightful)
if people stopped to consider risks, we'd still be living in caves and dying by the age of 20.
short term risks lead to long term security.
Re:Would someone be allergic to it? (Score:2)
Re:Would someone be allergic to it? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Would someone be allergic to it? (Score:4, Insightful)
Consider asbestos. Not a problem when incorporated in insulation. In fact you can touch it and eat it no problem. The problem is that asbestos tends to make the wrong size particles that can penetrate the lungs. So the physical size of the particle is more important than it's chemical composition.
Hope this is not too deep (in the lungs) for the non-allergy/chicken-little people to comprehend. What do you think coal miners get? Coal is carbon afterall. Two important pneumoconioses are coal worker's pneumoconiosis and silicosis.
can you tear this? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:can you tear this? (Score:5, Informative)
As bonds go, the inter-atomic bonds in this fabric are strong; but there's only one layer! Compared to like ten million atomic layers in a typical fabric. The carbon bonds aren't *that* much stronger that you can make a ten million times thinner (and weaker) piece and still have it be strong.
It's the same with nanotubes; they're as strong as tubes get, considering that they're only a nanometer in diameter. But compared to the weakest macroscopic thread you could imagine, an individual nanotube is far weaker. Proposed nanotube cables would use trillions of them in parallel to carry a load.
Re:can you tear this? (Score:5, Insightful)
A better comparison would be thinking about tearing a piece of aluminum foil. It is very hard to cause it to separate under tension and you have to add sheering forces to get a fracture to start.
Monosheet? (Score:5, Funny)
How strong is this stuff? If you stretched a band of it between two points, say along the edge of a sword, would you have something that could produce the world's nastiest paper cuts?
Re:Monosheet? (Score:2)
hell, surely there is a possibility that a monoatomic filament would simply pass through solid matter without contacting it??
Re:Monosheet? (Score:3, Informative)
The Pauli exclusion principle [wikipedia.org] begs to differ.
Neato (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Neato (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Neato (Score:3, Funny)
CONDOMS ! ! ! (Score:5, Funny)
you wont know you're wearing it.
And if you're a truely a geek, she wont know you're in it.
Re:CONDOMS ! ! ! (Score:3, Funny)
"Is it on?"
"Yeah."
"Are you sure?"
"Uh.. n-yeah."
...9 months later...
"It's a girl!"
Re:CONDOMS ! ! ! (Score:2, Insightful)
I found a picture of it! (Score:5, Funny)
Cool stuff, huh?
Not clothes; laminates (Score:2, Interesting)
Also, I wonder: could it be an even better material for the space elevator ribbon than nanotubes? After all, "ribbon" (which is how they describe the elevator cable in the articles I've read) suggests a flat string rather than a round one.
massively useful (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:massively useful (Score:2)
nanocapacitor (Score:2)
Instant taser.
This letter will self destruct in 30 seconds... (Score:2, Interesting)
The world's tiniest novel is now possible! (Score:4, Funny)
When will science catch up with my worthwhile ideas? When?
Brrrr.... (Score:4, Funny)
Two-Dimensional (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Two-Dimensional (Score:5, Informative)
This material was known before.. long before fullerenes even. It's just graphite.
The structure of graphite and the fact that the interplanar bonds are weak has been known for quite a long time.
The news here is that someone actually found a practical way to produce a single graphite layer.
But it's not really a new compound.
Re:Two-Dimensional (Score:3, Informative)
Technically [princeton.edu] it's not a "compound" at all.
and if this new... uh... material is just graphite, can you send me some graphite bundles from the jewlery shop? it has as much a right being called planiar diamond as graphite.
but yes, the material was known before. the idea of fullerenes and this material must have been on somones wish list.
Re:Two-Dimensional (Score:3, Informative)
Only if because you don't know what you're talking about.
Let me hit you with some undergraduate-level chemistry:
Graphite is the planar crystal conformation of carbon where each carbon atom binds to three others, forming plane unit rings of 6 carbon atoms. See this [science.org.au] image, for example. The bonds between the layers are not chemical
"computers made from a single molecule" (Score:2, Insightful)
The Emperor's New Clothes (Score:5, Funny)
Capacitors? (Score:3, Interesting)
Computers made from single molecule (Score:5, Insightful)
Any kind of machinery requires differentiated structures, and anything involving electricity requires localised anisotropy - or how will you get your current flows separate in order to do anything useful? DNA has a differentiated structure but it is not a machine, it is a recording medium (parenthetically, it's just as well the RIAA wasn't around when life evolved: "What do you mean, you can replicate DNA? That's illegal file-sharing!") and the machines that do something useful with it are all multi-molecular. It's unlikely a few billion years (sorry, George) of evolution will be seriously wrong about this. I don't mind Slashdot contributors including marketoid claims in headers, but they might at least quarantine them in quotes and put a [sic] at the end so we know that they know what we know.
Good idea for better sex - molecule condoms! (Score:4, Funny)
Molecule thin!
Get them while they are hot!
2050: Durex extra sensitive using nanotech technology with built into internal wifi nano-webcam and apache-hhtpd. Runs linux.
Manchester or UMIST (Score:3, Informative)
The University of Manchester is really still two universities, in the process of merger. As an ex Owens student, I'm intrigued as to whether it was their physics teams that found this or UMIST's down the road... Both good teams and I'm very proud they're still doing such good work.
anybody remember the sci fi story ... (Score:3, Informative)
Was it Piers Anthony? A whole *town* had women wearing transparent, incredibly thin bodysuits.
The story was set in the 50's, I think. The whole moral structure of this town had changed, because women could just, er, pop stuff right back out, without the slightest danger or even evidence. Some guy wandered into the town and was amazed at what he found.
Of course, most of modern society is that town now anyway, but without the bodysuits :(
Re:anybody remember the sci fi story ... (Score:3, Informative)
The story was set in the 50's, I think. The whole moral structure of this town had changed, because women could just, er, pop stuff right back out, without the slightest danger or even evidence. Some guy wandered into the town and was amazed at what he found.
Of course, most of modern society is that town now anyway, but without the bodysuits
Up Schist Crick, Piers Anthony 1972
Remember the ending? The guy, u
Re:Didn't RTFA... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Didn't RTFA... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Didn't RTFA... (Score:2)
It is conceivable that, if this material's properties are good enough and if it can be thickened or layered effectively, it could form the basis of future light but reliable heat-shield devices.
Re:Didn't RTFA... (Score:3, Informative)
Do you have a citation for that claim? The Apollo landers had a foil shilding, but the only claims I've found like the one above are from "fake moon landing" sites. The walls have to support one atmophere at a minimum which is over a ton of pressure per square foot.
Re:Didn't RTFA... (Score:2)
Re:Didn't RTFA... (Score:3, Funny)
Aha, but could you fold it in half more than 7 times?
Re:Didn't RTFA... (Score:2)
Re:Didn't RTFA... (Score:3, Interesting)
Ah, you mean a hull made from one single molecule which is transparent? linky [larryniven.org]
Re:Didn't RTFA... (Score:2)
Re:It's called graphite (Score:2)
future uses? (Score:4, Informative)
Probably not very. However, as with many thin and light materials, a very good use would be to layer these sheets into thousands of layers. Each sheet layer probably could not be one single molecule; that would be far too brittle, but if someone could figure out a way to neatly link sheets of a regular size (say 10x10 microns), and then stack thousands of them on top of each other, you'd get a very strong (linkage along one plane, and layering interplane), light, and smooth (graphite). You'd end up with flexible and chemically non-reactive materials that happend to be strong as well... Maybe you'd have a very pliable armor, or maybe some sort of non-reactive soft containers (if Nalgene made waterskins)
Or not
Re:future uses? (Score:2)
If you layer the layers with the proper spacing in between, this should work, right?
Re:future uses? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Didn't RTFA... (Score:2)
Hmmm... not sure how practical something like this would be made out of hydrogen atoms.
Re:Didn't RTFA... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Didn't RTFA... (Score:2)
Boron and Nitrogen bond to three other atoms too, and there may be a form of planar boron-nitride with similar properties.
Re:Didn't RTFA... (Score:2, Informative)
Carbon (Score:2)
Really, we're talking about how many angels can dance
Re:Processors (Score:2)
Re:World's First Single-Atom-Thick Fabric? No Way! (Score:3, Informative)
Gold leaf is very mallable indeed. But not to the extent that you can get it down to a single atom. The thinnest we can get today is a few hundred atoms.
Doesn't anyone remember the experiment where they shot beta particles at a sheet of gold leaf, which is one atom thick, or darn close, and they saw some of the particles were being reflected when they bounced off of the nucleus.
Yes, that was Rutherford. His sheet was approximately 400 atoms [virginia.edu] thick.
Re:Can someone fill me in here? (Score:3, Informative)
For example atomic force microscopy uses a very sharp needle and detects the force of the individual atoms.
IBM even used it to move individual atoms to spell "IBM" [fourmilab.ch].
Not quite (Score:3, Insightful)