21st Century Innovative Technologies and Developments as also discoveries, curiosity ( insolite)...

A new method of producing graphene could be the major breakthrough scientists are looking for. If the new method of producing the material on a thin polymer works at commercial scale, it could clear the way for mass production.

The potential for reproducing and adopting these graphene-like carbon nanosheets for other markets is what makes this story interesting. The team didn’t say what percent of the graphene was defect-free, but they do claim that this new manufacturing method is far simpler and less prone to failure than previous types of graphene production.

If this technique can be adapted to semiconductors or other types of solar cells, it could be far more useful than any marginal gain in organic solar cell efficiency.

According to Dr. Han Ik Joh at the Korean Institute for Science and Technology, graphene can be produced in a similar manner to carbon fiber — and while that’s hardly cheap, it’s still better than our current methods.

Learn more:

- 

The material has the potential to change the electronics industry, and recently researchers have focused on how to produce it commercially.

Graphene is the strongest, thinnest material known to exist. A form of carbon, it can conduct electricity and heat better than anything else. And get ready for this: It is not only the hardest material in the world, but also one of the most pliable.

Only a single atom thick, it has been called the wonder material.

For years, scientists have struggled to build graphene-based electronics that could do the same thing as silicon superconductor chips. A new breakthrough from an international team of scientists might just change all that. These geniuses just invented a new form of graphene that's ten times more conductive.

The trick to this new form of graphene is that it allows electrons to act like photons. The impressive material is simply nanoribbons of epitaxial graphene—that's the honeycomb arrangement of carbon atoms you're used to seeing to illustrate graphene—that's manufactured using a relatively simple process.

The scientists grew the nanoribbons on silicone carbide wafers in which they had etched circuit patterns using standard microelectronics techniques. The silicone was then heated to about 1,000º Celsius, melting the silicone off and leaving these novel graphene nanoribbons with perfectly smooth edges. The graphene forms spontaneously on the etched edges of the silicon.

.