The Graphene Revolution

by Brian Clegg

  One example of its work is the testing done in 2017 in collaboration with the European Space Agency to explore opportunities for graphene in ‘space-like’ applications. One experiment looked at making use of graphene’s excellent conductivity in a ‘loop heat pipe’ – effectively a cooling system that transfers heat from the hot pipe into a liquid. Although graphene’s abilities are well recorded in normal conditions, for space applications there is the need to check out if there is any change either under zero gravity or the heavy acceleration of lift-off. To date, all the evidence is that graphene will continue to perform just as effectively.

  Another experiment made use of graphene’s combination of strength and thinness in testing out solar sails – space-borne sails which pick up the pressure of the light from the Sun to accelerate a craft – made of graphene membranes. Again, this had to be performed in effectively zero gravity – achieved using the 146-metre drop tower in Bremen, Germany, which allows an experiment to undergo 9.3 seconds of weightless free fall as it plummets down the tower. More work is needed here, but again the indications are good.

  Creativity in action

  All in all, Geim and Novoselov’s work on graphene is a wonderful example of creativity at work in a scientific sphere. Geim is convinced that his approach of encouraging Friday night experiments provides a mechanism to ensure that scientists do not get stuck in a rut, as can easily happen with their usual extremely narrow focus. There are interesting parallels with the approach taken for decades at the US company 3M, in which engineers are encouraged to spend half a day a week working on something that isn’t their main activity – a fun side project that could result in a whole new product for the company. With a pleasing similarity to the idea of peeling off layers of carbon in graphene, Post-it Notes are just one of the products to emerge from that 3M process.

  All too often, scientists spend all their time focused on a single detail in a very narrow field. But the Friday night experiment approach really does seem to provide an opportunity that many more scientists could benefit from. Geim notes that when preparing for his Nobel lecture, he compiled a list of around two dozen Friday night experiments he and his colleagues had undertaken over the years. Most, as might be expected, had failed. Failure is an important part of the creative process. But there were three hits, in levitation, Gecko tape and graphene. As Geim points out, this makes for an impressive success rate of better than 10 per cent, bearing in mind these were just fun little projects with very little budget.

  There were also a number of near misses among the apparent failures, showing how remarkably productive the process is. Geim believes that this success rate is not because the ideas (or even the scientists) were particularly brilliant, but because ‘poking around in new directions, even randomly, is more rewarding than is generally perceived’. You may well fail in this kind of venture, but by limiting it to a relatively small part of work time and allowing the imagination free rein, it seems a very powerful way to ensure that new paths are explored, sometimes leading to a remarkable reward, as happened with graphene. And, as Geim says, one is at least guaranteed an adventure.

  A second plank of Geim’s approach, which might surprise some of his peers, is not to put too much effort into checking the literature for other people’s attempts in related fields. Yes, he suggests, it’s still important to have a couple of reviews to ensure that your exciting new idea is not entirely reinventing the wheel, but if you spend all your time looking at the literature and not trying things, Geim claims that you won’t do anything useful – and will no doubt come to the conclusion that your idea has been tried before and it didn’t work, so there’s no point going any further. But every attempt is subtly different and sometimes it only takes a small factor to make a big difference.

  Bear in mind that it was well established before Geim and Novoselov’s work on graphene that two-dimensional structures of this kind could not be made . They were ‘known’ to be unstable. But the accepted ‘facts’ were wrong. Nothing is going to be entirely new. But taking a different approach, looking at things a different way, can make all the difference. And even with that determination to give it a try, without the inspiration of the dirty tape in the waste bins, that happy coincidence, nothing might have come of that particular Friday night project.

  Geim and Novoselov could have taken note of the theory that said it wasn’t possible to make stable graphene. But they didn’t.

  And the outcome is quietly changing the world.

  * For a two-dimensional substance, graphene actually absorbs quite a lot of the incoming light, only allowing around 97.7 per cent through, but this is still significantly more transparent than the thicker metal layers that are used in these technologies.

  † As we have seen, ions are atoms which have gained or lost one or more electrons and become electrically charged. For example, in seawater, salt is not present as sodium chloride, but as positively charged sodium ions and negatively charged chlorine ions.

  ‡ I was once given a shirt that lit up with a Wi-Fi power level symbol when it was in the presence of a Wi-Fi hub, displaying how good the signal was. The concept was great, but for the reasons mentioned here it was a pain to wear. It was retired after one go.

  § The demon is a thought experiment which supposedly defies the second law of thermodynamics by allowing heat to pass from a cooler to a warmer place, using a tiny demon that can see which air molecules are fast and which are slow, and using a partition to separate them into different containers. Unlike the fictional Maxwell’s demon, the graphene generator does not break the second law of thermodynamics.

  ¶ The contamination-free requirement is a pleasing parallel with the original physics laboratory at Manchester that Rutherford had worked in, with its air purifiers, drawing the smoky industrial city air over oil baths to clean it.

  FURTHER READING

  There has been relatively little published for the public on graphene, other ultrathin materials, and their applications. This means that often the best opportunities for further reading will come from websites and other more transient media rather than from books.

  Chapter 1: The sticky tape solution

  The Graphene Institute website: www.graphene.manchester.ac.uk – elegant website with some information on the people involved, the work at Manchester, graphene itself and applications news.

  Andre Geim’s Nobel lecture: www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2010/geim_lecture.pdf – a very readable piece by Geim on his approach to science, his personal history and the discovery of graphene.

  Konstantin Novoselov’s Nobel lecture: www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2010/novoselov_lecture.pdf – a more technical piece than Geim’s, but largely readable on the nature of graphene and some of its potential applications.

  Chapter 2: The essence of matter

  Atom, Piers Bizony (Icon, 2017) – a good introduction to our gradual understanding of the nature of matter.

  Chapter 3: Quantum reality

  The Quantum Age, Brian Clegg (Icon, 2015) – a guide to quantum physics with more information than is generally provided on applications, from lasers to electronics.

  Cracking Quantum Physics, Brian Clegg (Cassell, 2017) – a highly illustrated introduction to the basics of quantum physics.

  Chapter 4: Like nothing we’ve seen before/

  Chapter 5: Other flatties

  Graphene: A New Paradigm in Condensed Matter and Device Physics, E.L. Wolf (Oxford University Press, 2014) – not much use unless you have a physics degree, but if you can take the technical content this provides a good way to discover why graphene and the other ultrathin materials are so special.

  National Graphene Institute News: www.graphene.manchester.ac.uk/latest – a good way to pick up on some of the latest developments in two-dimensional material applications, though inevitably biased to those discovered in Manchester.

  Science Daily Graphene News: www.sciencedaily.com/news/matter_energy/graphene – the late
st happenings in graphene from around the world.

  Chapter 6: The ultrathin world

  The Right Formula: The Story of the National Graphene Institute, David Taylor (Manchester University Press, 2016) – a bit of a glossy sales brochure, but still has interesting snippets on both the discovery of graphene and the construction of the Institute.

  Graphene Flagship – more information about the Graphene Flagship consortium and other breakthroughs in graphene can be found on the website grapheneflagship.eu

  Graphene patents – an overview of the state of patents in 2015 can be found in the UK Intellectual Property Office report ‘Graphene: the worldwide patent landscape in 2015’, available at www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/470918/Graphene_-_the_worldwide_patent_landscape_in_2015.pdf

  INDEX

  Asterisks indicate footnotes

  3M 1

  A

  Abrahams, Marc 1 §

  Agrigentum 1

  Anderson, Carl

  discovery of positron 1

  anti-electron see positron

  Aristotle 1

  atoms

  allotropes of carbon 1

  bonding 1 , 2

  hexagonal form of ice 1

  hydrogen bonding 1

  shells around atom 1 , 2 , 3

  B

  Balmer, Jakob 1

  Balmer’s equation 1

  band gaps

  bigraphene 1

  ‘conduction band’ 1 , 2 , 3

  semiconductor band gap 1 , 2

  silicene 1

  ‘valence band’ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

  ‘zero band gap’ 1

  Bardeen, John 1

  Bernal arrangement 1

  Berry, Michael

  collaboration with Geim on frog project 1 , 2

  Berzelius, Jöns Jacob 1

  Big Bang Theory, The 1 **

  Bohr, Niels 1

  Carlsberg Foundation grant 1

  exploring structure of atom 1

  letter to brother Harald 1

  quantum model of the atom 1

  Rutherford, working with 1

  study in England 1

  Thomson, working with 1

  Boole, George

  Boolean algebra 1

  Born, Max 1

  boron nitride

  applications 1

  hexagonal lattice 1

  shared properties with graphene 1

  substrates, use in 1

  visual electronics, use in 1

  Brattain, Walter 1

  Bremen

  zero gravity experiments 1

  Bridgman, Percy 1

  Brown, Robert

  Brownian motion 1 , 2

  C

  capacitors 1

  supercapacitors 1

  carbon

  allotropes 1

  carbon nanotubes 1 , 2 , 3

  fullerenes 1

  physical properties of 1

  reaction with fluorine 1

  structure in graphite 1 , 2

  carborundum 1

  cathode rays 1

  CRT TVs 1

  computers

  function of 1

  LCD displays 1

  logic gates 1 , 2

  Crookes, William

  Crookes tubes 1

  D

  Dalén, Gustaf 1

  Dalton, John 1

  early life 1

  atomic weight, concept of 1

  atomic theory 1

  Darwin, Charles 1

  Darwin, Charles Galton

  work on atoms 1

  Democritus 1

  desalination 1

  diamond

  allotropes of carbon 1

  conductor of heat 1

  covalent carbon–carbon bonds in 1

  cube-shaped lattice 1

  electrical insulator 1

  graphite and diamond, differences 1

  structure of 1

  dichalcogenides 1

  applications 1

  dielectrophoresis 1

  diode 1

  ‘p-type’ semiconductor 1

  ‘n-type’ semiconductor 1

  Dirac, Paul

  Dirac equation 1

  Dirac fermions 1 **

  negative energy problem 1

  personality 1

  Royal Society publishes work 1

  using Schrödinger equation 1 , 2

  work on quantum theory 1

  E

  Eddington 1

  Einstein, Albert 1

  nominations for Nobel Prize 1

  proved existence of quantum world 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

  special theory of relativity 1

  electronics

  tunnelling awareness 1

  band gap in semiconductor 1

  printed electronics 1

  ultrathin films 1

  wearable electronics 1

  Empedocles 1

  European Space Agency 1

  evaporation 1

  F

  Faraday, Michael 1 , 2 , 3

  Feynman, Richard 1

  talk given in 1959 1

  fluorographene 1 , 2

  properties of 1

  ‘Friday night experiments’ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 5

  parallels with 3M approach 1

  Fuller, Buckminster

  fullerene or buckeyball molecule 1

  geodesic domes 1

  G

  galena 1

  Galileo 1

  Gecko tape 1

  gas detector 1

  Geiger, Hans 1

  Geim, Andre 1

  approach to experiments 1

  awarded Nobel Prize for Physics 1

  birthplace 1

  early life and education 1

  Eureka moment 1 , 2

  filtration, work on 1

  ‘Friday night experiments’ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4

  ‘Gecko tape’ 1 , 2

  Ig Nobel prize 1

  ‘Lego doctrine’ 1

  levitating frogs and hamsters 1 , 2 , 3

  Nobel lecture 1

  Nobel prize work with Novoselov 1 , 2 , 3

  Physica B: Condensed Matter 1

  publishes paper on graphene 1

  reaction to winning Nobel Prize 1

  reputation for original science 1

  science as an adventure reference 1

  Scotch tape 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8

  sense of humour 1 , 2

  significance of work 1

  substrates, use of 1

  thesis at Institute of Solid State Physics 1

  graphane 1

  graphane

  boron nitride, applications with 1

  carbon–carbon covalent bonds 1

  charge carriers in 1 , 2

  chemical reactions in 1

  chemical vapour deposition 1

  chip-based 1

  conduction of electricity 1

  converting to fluorographene 1

  discovery 1 , 2

  dual-layer graphene 1

  epitaxial graphene 1

  evaporation, uses in 1

  field effect transistor 1

  generator of energy 1

  graphene-enhanced rubber 1

  graphene oxide supercapacitor 1 , 2

  health hazards of 1

  high conductivity of 1 , 2

  impact of thermal vibration 1

  larger scale samples, producing 1

  larger uniform sheet production 1

  lattice structure of 1 , 2 , 3

  LCD displays, in production of 1

  multi-layered graphene oxide 1

  producers of 1

  reaction to electricity 1

  solar cells, use in 1

  ‘space like’ applications 1

  strength of 1 , 2

  substrates, use of 1

  tattoos 1

  tensile strength 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7

  transparency 1 , 2

  transistors, in production of 1

  two-dimensional claim 1 , 2
>
  Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre 1

  Graphene Flagship initiative 1

  collaborating with European Space Agency 1

  Graphene Institute

  evaporation, work on 1

  filtration, research into 1 , 2

  Inov-8 running shoe collaboration 1

  graphite

  allotropes of carbon 1

  amorphous carbon allotropes 1

  carbon structure 1 , 2

  differences compared with diamond 1 , 2

  electrical conductor 1

  filtration, use in 1

  fullerenes 1

  hexagonal structure 1 , 2 , 3

  highly oriented pyrolytic 1

  lonsdaleite allotropes 1

  Kish graphite 1 §§

  gravity

  weakness of 1 ¶

  Grégoire, Colette 1

  Grégoire, Marc 1

  Grigorieva, Irina 1

  H

  Hall, Edwin 1

  hamster 1

  Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle 1 , 2

  Hetherington, Jack 1 ††

  Human Genome Project 1

  hydrogen

  Bohr’s study of hydrogen atom 1

  hydrogen silsesquioxane 1

  weight 1

  I

  IBM 1 , 2

  Ig Nobel Prize 1

  Ingenhousz, Jan 1 ‡

  Inov-8

  G-series running shoe 1

  Institute of Solid State Physics 1

  International Space Station 1

  ionic bonds 1

  J

  Jiang, Da

  work on graphite 1

  Jodrell Bank radio astronomy observatory 1

  K

  Keswick

  pencil museum 1 ‡‡

  Kossel, Walther 1

  L

  Large Hadron Collider 1

  ‘Lego doctrine’ 1

  Leucippus 1 , 2

  Lévy flight 1

  Lewis, Gilbert 1

  LIGO observatories 1