Unzipping Nanotubes Makes Superfast Electronics 64
Al writes "Two research groups have found a way to unzip carbon nanotubes to create nanoribbons of graphene — a material that has shown great promise for use as nanoscale transistors, but which has proven difficult to manufacture previously. A team led by James Tour, a professor of chemistry and computer science at Rice University, and another led by Hongjie Dai, a professor of chemistry at Stanford University, both figured out ways to slice carbon nanotubes open to create the nanoribbons. The Stanford team was funded by Intel, and the Rice group is in talks with several companies about commercializing their approach."
Re:Unzipping your moms pants (Score:5, Funny)
She did say you were pretty quick.
Unzipping nano-tubes!"! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Anyone... (Score:5, Funny)
Nanoribboned for her pleasure.
Re:Anyone... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Anyone... (Score:5, Funny)
[mage] what should I give sister for unzipping?
[Kevyn] Um. Ten bucks?
[mage] no I mean like, WinZip?
-Bash.org
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My chemistry is old but... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:My chemistry is old but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
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But if they unzip them, the emails fall out! OH THE HUMANITY!
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"And again, the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck. It's a series of [nano]tubes" Wow this time it would actually make sense.
Now for the application (Score:5, Insightful)
So now we have a method to bulk-produce graphene; but do we have a way to implement it in devices?
In any case, this is good. Nanowire diameter shouldn't be that hard to manipulate. The more you can manipulate something in synthesis for functional properties, the better it is for application. Look at doping silicon for example.
In any case, I wonder what the lifetime of a graphene-based device would be. Molecular compounds aren't always the most stable. That's one of the main reasons that they are being held back from adoption.
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You forgot saffron. I've seen it from $80000-$120000/kg)
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Wikipedia: Transuranium element [wikipedia.org]
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Buying Californium on your Visa card and having the feds turn up, priceless!
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Hey, My father bought 500g saffron for ~5 in Yemen (where it is produced).
Where do you live?
1. Let's fly to Yemen,
2. buy 50kg,
3. sell it for $70000/kg where you've seen it.
4. PROFIT!!!
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You should take a look at some other substances, like gold, tungstein, platinum... Or maybe you should want to fix that price becuse for $150 the gram a 1 miligram chip would have the extratospheric cost of $0,015 from materials.
What are "ribbens"? (Score:2, Informative)
I rtfa and I saw mention of nanoribbons, but nothing about nanoribbens. Obviously Al doesn't know what he's talking about since he's just making up new words on the fly.
Re:What are "ribbens"? (Score:5, Funny)
...he's just making up new words on the fly.
With all the unzipping going on, making up words on the fly is probably OK in this instance.
A simpler answer (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A simpler answer (Score:5, Funny)
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A factory in some third world country, where workers make factories that produce third world countries, that contain workers that make factories for factories that produce workers that make scale models of factories.
Or in Java:
3rdWorldCountry.3rdWorldCountryFactoryWorkersFactory.Workers.FactoryScaleModelWorkerFactoryFactory my3WC3WCFWFWFSMWFF = 3rdWorldCountry.3rdWorldCountryFactoryWorkersFactory.Workers.FactoryScaleModelWorkerFactoryFactory.CreateInstance()
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Location: Soviet Russia
Nanoscale and cosmic rays (Score:4, Interesting)
Won't a stray cosmic ray cause my cpu to fall over?
Perfect! (Score:3, Funny)
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Sounds like you bought someone a buckyball for their birthday.
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Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
By this standard, a buckyball sounds like a very tasteful present.
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Especially, because you could just wrap up a nice looking empty box with a picture/certificate on it.
Love is blind, Mr. Saint-Exupéry.
Next Step..... (Score:2)
Two words:
Nanoitching powder.
It practically sells itself!
ok, so now what (Score:5, Interesting)
Both these groups have succeeded where many others have tried and failed (even with very similar ideas). It's great work. As the summary suggested though, they've taken one hard to work with material and using a complicated process, made an even harder to work with material. This is great for doing science, as graphene ribbons are a huge pain to make, and this should open up more labs to investigating their properties.
If we're going to have graphene consumer electronics though, it's going to be based on the wafer-scale CVD manufacturing process developed in Korea and MIT.
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If we're going to have graphene consumer electronics though, it's going to be based on the wafer-scale CVD manufacturing process developed in Korea and MIT.
Trust me, CVD synthesis of graphene is in the earliest of early stages. The problem is that neither group (Korea nor MIT) have figured out how to get the graphene off the nickel layer that catalyzes the reaction. There are other ways of making graphene that are much further along, such as epitaxial growth on silicon carbide.
Re:ok, so now what (Score:5, Interesting)
The big benefit of the CVD method is that it's actually easy to remove from the growth wafer. Nickel is easy to dissolve. The first papers on CVD graphene did this and demonstrated pretty good transistors. No one has made ribbons from it yet, but I'm working on that.
Based on those easy-to-make nanotubes...? (Score:2, Informative)
It's really funny, but it seemed like the nanotubes themselves were pretty hard to make not too long ago. Then, as of last year, I find they are down to $150/kg and are working their way into all sorts of consumer applications.
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- Stereo 3D in the home
- Personalized medicine
- The end of the economic crisis
- Flying cars
- Duke Nukem Forever
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*yawn* (Score:1, Interesting)
Posting anonymously for obvious reasons
I work in the graphene area, and I think this is bullshit. First, graphene nanoribbons created using this method do not address the fundamental issues that accompany using carbon nanotubes such as targeted orientation or chirality concerns. This is a clear case of missing the forest for the trees. Second, Dai is known for some rather unbelievable studies.
Carbon... (Score:1)
All hail the inanimate carbon rod!
Mn2O7 (Score:2)
Hmm, as I recall my High School terror^H^H^H^H^H^Hchemistry classes, that produces Manganese Heptoxide [wikipedia.org].