Two research groups have published two different ways to unzip carbon nanotubes to create graphene ribbons.
Two papers in a recent issue of Science suggest that graphene is rapidly moving from being “just” a nanotech wonder material to becoming relevant to atomically precise nanotechnologies.
Computer simulations have shown that graphene deposited on a silicon dioxide surface will be either a semiconductor or a metal depending on whether the underlying layer is terminated with oxygen atoms or passivated with hydrogen atoms.
It has not been tested experimentally yet, but if a proposal to use graphene as a nanotech method to sequence DNA very rapidly and inexpensively pans out, the “wonder material” of nanotechnology could find yet another use.
The recent demonstration of the ability to “fully engineer the electronic band gap of graphene” is a major advance in the top-down approach to nanotech applications that take advantage of the many marvelous properties of graphene.
Chemically modified graphene (CMG) may lead to ultracapacitors that can store about twice as much electrical charge as is possible with current commercially available materials.
Add to graphene’s record-breaking strength the discovery that graphene beams are unexpectedly stiff.
Researchers have demonstrated atomically precise cuts through a few graphene layers.
The recently demonstrated ability to visualize individual atoms of carbon and hydrogen on a graphene surface opens new avenues for studying the behavior of hydrocarbon chains.
Researchers at Columbia University have demonstrated that graphene is the strongest known material.
