Graphene The Great?

Picture source: http://spectrum.ieee.org/
INDUSTRIAL ENGINEER – VOLUME 47, NUMBER 4

Technique could manufacture ‘miracle material’ on industrial scale
A team of engineers at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands discovered something strange a few years ago about graphene grown on copper – copper oxide also was present, and a graphene film appeared to have formed on the oxide. This led them to wonder if oxidized materials might leave the properties of graphene unaltered. Three years later, according to the Australian engineering news site Engineering Career, the team was able to grow graphene on copper oxide. What’s more, the graphene on copper oxide is decoupled from the substrate, preserving the substance’s electronic properties.

Graphene is a single sheet of carbon one atom thick that allows electrons to pass through with hardly any resistance. Its strength, small size and electrical conductivity could make it an heir to copper and silicon as the fundamental building block of nanoelectronics.

The team noted that other labs need to reproduce the findings. But if they do, the future could see industrial printing techniques make all sorts of electronic devices from graphene in a commercially viable manner, according to the website.