DailyDirt: Cool Graphene Tricks

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Carbon is an incredible element. It comes in the form of diamond, but it also forms other allotropes such as nanofoam, carbyne chains, buckyballs and chaoite. Carbon also make graphene, and that's a material that could have a lot of potential, if we can figure out how to make large quantities of it economically. Here are just a few properties of graphene.

• Graphene is one of the strongest known materials. Its strength doesn't actually scale very well as a bulk material, but on a very small scale, graphene is super strong. [url]
• Saltwater flowing over a sheet of graphene can generate electricity. Researchers have only generated very small voltages (eg. 30mV), but if this property can scale, it could create another kind of hydroelectric generator without complex moving parts. [url]
• Graphene could be useful in super-capacitors (or ultra-capacitors), as sheets of graphene can be made into flexible, durable and highly conductive electrochemical capacitors. It's just not that easy to manipulate single layers of graphene and create stable devices (yet). [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: allotrope, carbon, chemistry, electrochemical capacitors, energy, graphene, materials, super-capacitors, ultra-capacitors