Graphene and Our Future

"They move through the graphene as a wave. It's a wave! The moment to applaud would be now."

Benny so underestimates in his futurecasts. 

Alan that is fantastic. Think

Bernd that is fantastic. Think how wonderful that would be for nearly everything that uses electronics, decoders as thick as a piece of cardstock to include keep alives, flexible, shock resistant. My favorite part carbon based the sixth most common element in the universe, woohoo can everyone give me a cheep technology brothers and sisters.

Also why graphite works on track so well

Very cool...

Not that I believe it is going to revolutionize "our" futures...and certainly not the future of the world environment etc.

Maybe it can reduce the size of the usual suspects dissertations on the forums...lol!

Very Cool Connection!

Joe, I watched the video and never made that connection. Of course, you're absolutely right. Model Railroaders discover Graphene! No Nobel Prize, but the trains run well.

Even a battery ...

While I'm not holding my breath that this will become mainstream for several years, demand for batteries may push this to rapid development. Goodbye supercaps.

​Very exciting indeed! Thanks for sharing

Neil Erickson

Umauma, HI

Buckyballs and Buckytubes Are The Future???

Physicist, chemist and material scientist have been playing with various carbon allotropes for decades. The first serious work on thin carbon materials was actually in the late 1650's and early 1960's. In the 1980's Fullerenes (buckyballs and buckytubes) were supposed to provide many of the wonderful electronic advances now ascribed for graphene. As with buckyballs and buckytubes it has now been discovered that graphene is a naturally occurring which sort of dims the Wow factor (Also found on the inner surface of carbon arc lamps, so we have probably been manufacturing it for well over a century). I remember the first time I watched as a carbon composition bias resistor in a transmitter failed turning into a short lived carbon arc lamp. If they had attempted to run any serious current through the graphene layer on the plastic sheet used in the video, there would have been a similar, but maybe imperceptible, poof. It is a very interesting material but the labs say it will be some time before we see viable electronic products using graphene.

It is a very interesting

Didn't it take a while before the steam engine was able to used in a locomotive as well?

This short bit gives credence

This short bit gives credence as to the efficacy of graphite on rails.

The next technological sea-change

... is almost upon us, then! Exciting stuff, and I do expect to see graphene technology in mainstream use during my lifetime. Even less energy wasted via heat generation, abundant supplies of carbon, and consumer demand for the next shiny communications toy as well as cheaper electric cars will be the drivers. But applications for model railroading? I'm not so hopeful that we'll be seeing graphene-based decoders 10 years from now.

Neolube

Isn`t Neolube a graphite material?

Yes, but...

Dear BR GP30,

Yes, Neolube is powdered-grahite, suspended in isopropyl alcohol. Result, an application of Neolube is waaaaaaaaaaaaaay tooo thick to form "graphene". As previously noted, if the aim is improved contact, far better to go with a single swipe of a graphite stick /"woodless pencil", and run trains over the area...

Happy Modelling,
Aim to Improve,
Prof Klyzlr

The next technological

I am just wondering if the electronics industry will be using these things to make the next generations of chips sooner than we think. Once they begin to use them for phones, and tablets, and laptops, they will begin showing up in everything from greeting cards to applications in our trains. The automotive industry would just love to have components built from these things.

I'm not so hopeful that we'll be seeing graphene-based decoders

ten years from now"

All we need is for other integrated circuit heavy hitters to get going with this technology and all we have to do is ride their coat-tails.