University of Manchester - Page 23

A new study finds that by combining graphene with metallic nanostructures, there was a 20-fold enhancement in the amount of light the graphene could harvest and convert into electrical power. The team (which included last year's Nobel Prize-winning scientists Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov) says that these new graphene cell devices can be incredibly fast - tens or potentially hundreds of times faster than communication rates in the fastest Internet cables currently in use. The problem was the cell devices' low efficiency as graphene absorbs very little light (around 3%).

They now found that this problem can be solved by combining graphene with tiny metallic structures known as plasmonic nanostructures, which are specially arranged on top of graphene. The light-harvesting performance of graphene was boosted by 20 times without sacrificing any of its speed.

Andre Geim from the University of Manchester UK (the 2010 Nobel prize in Physics winner) gives a great lecture on Graphene - starting with an introduction and then giving updates from their latest research:

Nobel Prize laureate Konstantin Novoselov says that making Graphene is easy: all you need is a mobile phone, Graphite from a pencil and a scotch tape. You stick the tape to the Graphite and transfer it to a solid substrate, the mobile phone's screen in that case. He also says that Drinking Vodka can help as it can degrease the surface...

All you need is a good quality graphite and preparing the substrate, says Konstantin.

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!

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).

European researchers discovered that stretching graphene can make it a good semiconductor. Normally, there is a lack of a 'gap' Graphene's energy spectrum. This gap is present in silicon and other materials used by the semiconductor industry. Without the gap, Graphene tends to 'leak' energy when used as a transistor.

The researchers discovered that when you stretch graphene, the semiconducting gap opens.

Graphane has the same honeycomb structure as graphene, except that it is "spray-painted" with hydrogen atoms that attach themselves to the carbon. The resulting bonds between the hydrogen and carbon atoms effectively tie down the electrons that make graphene so conducting. Yet Graphane retains the thinness, super-strength, flexibility and density of its older chemical cousin.

One advantage of graphane is that it could actually become easier to make the tiny strips of graphene needed for electronic circuits. Such structures are currently made rather crudely by taking a sheet of the material and effectively burning away everything except the bit you need. But now such strips could be made by simply coating the whole of a graphene sheet except for the strip itself - with hydrogen. The narrow bit left free of hydrogen is your conducting graphene strip, surrounded by a much bigger graphane area that electrons cannot go down.

As if this is not enough, the physicist group in Manchester that discovered Graphane have found that by gradually binding hydrogen to graphene they are able to drive the process of transforming a conducting material into an insulating one and watch what happens in between.