Today we learned that Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, who performed groundbreaking experiments in Graphene, were awarded the 2010 Nobel prize in Physics. They got the prize "for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene". Congratulations guys!
Michael Crommie, a physicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and his team discovered that if you strain and stretch Graphene then you get little wrinkles: nanobubbles. Electrons around these bubbles acted as if they where experiencing up to 300 Tesla of magnetic force (despite the lack of a sufficient magnetic field).
Graphene nanobubbles
The ability to control the existence of such powerful magnetic-like forces could potentially lead to the development of smaller, more powerful transistor switches in semi-conductors.
Researchers from the UK and Greece have developed a new way to enhance SERS (Surface-enhanced Raman scattering) signals. SERS is a powerful way to identify molecules at very low concentrations a technique that has proven very useful in forensics, medical diagnostics and identifying new drugs.
The researchers used Graphene as a substrate for SERS, and they say it performs better then current solutions - and can help us better understand SERS physics.
Update: Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov are Noble prize winners!
The American Institute of Physics conducted a poll - who out to win the next Nobel prize for Physics? 320 people cast their votes, and 11.3% of them voted for Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov - for discovering Graphene.
So obviously this is just speculation - and we'll have to wait to see who the real winners are (on Tuesday, October 5th).
Scientists from the University of Maryland in College Park has created a spinning graphene disk that is the fastest spinning object ever: 60 million rotations per minute. The scientists sprayed charged graphene flakes a micrometer wide into a vacuum chamber. Once there, oscillating electric fields trapped the flakes in mid-air. They then set them spinning using a light beam that is circularly polarize, meaning it passes its momentum to objects in its path. As a result, the flakes started spinning.
They actually aid that this is only about a thousandth of Graphene's theoretical maximum rate - at least the Graphene is strong enough for such speeds.
