Friday 14 October 2016

THE TALE OF TWO DIMENSIONALS

I took a look at Graphene again by looking at a number of YouTube videos.

I had wondered from the outset of the discovery of Graphene that there may well be other materials that have strange and useful structures in thicknesses in single numbers when it comes to atoms

I also wondered whether or not that in other materials it may not be required to be one atom thick and that a transformation in the structures of materials with two or more atoms?

Questioned that about thicknesses of more than one atom before … probably will have a very long wait before I hear anything about that, if indeed at all?

Graphene in Manchester 2004 ...

  • Lightest Material
  • Strongest Material
  • Harder than Diamond
  • 300x Stronger than Steel
  • Flexible
  • Clear

I originally read that they found Graphene accidentally using a food mixer. I now understand that this was wrong and that the isolated Graphene using sticky tape or Scotch tape by continuously pulling apart the layers until there is one layer of atoms left.

Other two dimensional materials being researched are ...

  • NbSe2 or Niobium and Selenium.
  • Boron-Nitride
  • MgB2 or Magnesium diboride.

God only knows how many others are being looked at or have already been found I have yet to read about?

In fact there are a whole load being looked into because Graphene seems to have imperfections that make it hard to impossible to make a CPU chip out of, sad to hear...



I am astounded only in that they have found useful properties in other 2 dimensional materials already but then if I was a scientist that had access to a laboratory and equipment, I would have experimented with other two dimensional materials immediately.

I watched the following ...



Then I moved on to the Materials Research Society on YouTube.

Eventually I found that there were no less than eleven materials that have been manipulated into thicknesses of just one atom. Though I have to admit that they are also talking about combinations of atoms in two dimensional form and I do not see how that works out to be a single layer of atoms as two atoms bonded together is more than one atom. Unless they stay bonded but just flattened out into ever more unusual forms? Yes this must be it and why they are still talking about two dimensional materials?

Not that it matters because it is very interesting and not forgetting very cool.

This is one of two breakthroughs in science that I am extremely keen to see how the development goes. Just a shame that things are the way they are for me and very slow and boring while development in these materials is going to inevitably slow too.

Two damned slow boats drifting out towards China.

I am particularly interested to see how these technologies will effect space travel. I how Graphene would handle being hit my micrometeorites? Or a craft built out of thin titanium wrapped in Graphene?

I wonder how each of the other materials will compare to Graphene? Will they find metrials or compounds that in two dimensional form are better than Graphene? After all Graphene was simply the first two dimensional material discovered. The odds are good that as each is researched we could find things that exceed Graphene in certain areas. One that is as strong but also stiff, for instance?


So they have discovered that Graphene can have imperfections? First I have heard of this but I am also surprised to see the word 'Silicene' which is obviously a single layer of Silicon atoms.

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