Welcome to the high-carbon future - tech - 27 November 2009 - New Scientist 27/11/09 7:01 PM

Home | Tech | Physics & Math | In-Depth Articles | Back to article

Welcome to the high-carbon future

27 November 2009 by Michael Brooks
Magazine issue 2736. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.
For similar stories, visit the Nanotechnology Topic Guide

ADVERTISEMENT
CARBON is a dirty word. We burn too much
of it, producing billions of tonnes of carbon
dioxide that threatens to wreck our planet's
climate for generations to come. Before that it
was the villain of the piece in the guise of
the soot that poured from factory chimneys
and turned cities black. It has a lot to live
down.

Now our long-time enemy could be on the

brink of becoming our high-tech best friend.
As we learn to shape carbon on the
nanoscale - into tubes and sheets, balls and
ribbons - entirely new and unexpected vistas Wonder-material is poised to take the world by
are opening up. The carbon atoms that were storm (Image: Getty)
forged in the furnace of the universe's stars
2 more images
can be woven together into materials that
may help gather energy from our own star.
Similar materials promise to make our electronic world run with unprecedented efficiency, and may
even hold the secret to eking out precious reserves of oil.

As we learn to shape carbon on the nanoscale, new and unexpected vistas are
opening up

Carbon's potential stems from the fact that it is multitalented. Collections of carbon atoms will
happily assemble themselves into a multitude of structures, from diamond to graphite, but these
familiar forms are just the beginning. In the past few decades we have learned about the soccer-
ball-shaped spheres called buckyballs, soon followed by the microscopic rolls of chicken wire we
know as carbon nanotubes. Now they have been joined by graphene, sheets of carbon that are
just one atom thick.

Of these many intriguing structures, graphene is causing the biggest stir. This is partly because of
its unusual combination of properties: its two-dimensional honeycomb lattice of carbon atoms
combines fantastic electrical conductivity with a strength tens of times that of steel in a material
that is transparent to visible light. Best of all, we have finally learned how to make it.

This last breakthrough came in 2004, when Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov at the University of
Manchester, UK, discovered they could produce graphene sheets from a fleck of graphite by
simply peeling it off with a strip of sticky tape (Science, vol 306, p 666). It has been followed by a
flood of improved methods, including a technique reported earlier this year by Jing Kong and her
team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which involves growing graphene on top of
crystals of other materials and then chemically stripping the supporting crystal away (Nano Letters,
vol 9, p 30). After just five years of development, making graphene is easier than anyone ever
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427362.000-welcome-to-the-highcarbon-future.html?full=true&print=true Page 1 of 5
Welcome to the high-carbon future - tech - 27 November 2009 - New Scientist 27/11/09 7:01 PM

vol 9, p 30). After just five years of development, making graphene is easier than anyone ever
thought possible, and ramping up to industrial scale production is just a question of demand. "It
doesn't even require minor breakthroughs; it's just polish and precision now," says Geim.

After Geim isolated the first few flakes, it was quickly apparent to theorists that this material
should have some pretty special properties. At the time there was too little of the material
available to experiment on. "Now it's very different," says Vitor Pereira of Boston University. "There
are more experimental than theoretical papers... That's really exciting because it's out of
experimental results that the true breakthroughs come."

The big breakthrough everyone is looking towards arises from graphene's potential for
revolutionising our gadgets, as electrons travel through graphene in a particularly efficient fashion.
In conventional conductors and semiconductors, such as copper and silicon, electrons collide with
atoms and dissipate their energy as heat - a typical computer chip wastes 70 to 80 per cent of its
electrical power in this way. That means the materials can get hot enough at times to distort or
even destroy their circuitry. But graphene is different. "The electron energy is not dissipated,"
Pereira says. "That gives it fantastic characteristics for electronics."

It is particularly useful for high-frequency circuits - which happens to be exactly where the
electronics industry is heading. Devices such as cellphones require ever higher frequencies as
engineers try to cram more information onto the signal - and the higher the operating frequency,
the greater the heating effect. "At the moment, graphene looks like the most promising way
forward," Novoselov says.

Switched on sensors

An even bigger market for graphene might be in fabricating the photon sensors that detect the
information carried in optical telecommunications fibres, Novoselov reckons. At the moment, the
job is done by silicon, but its days may be numbered. In October, Phaedon Avouris's group at
IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center in New York unveiled the first graphene photodetector
(Nature Nanotechnology, DOI: 10.1038/nnano.2009.292).

Also on the drawing board are graphene-based solar cells and LCD screens. Because the
material is transparent, electrodes made of graphene let more light in or out than any alternative
material. That could mean efficient solar cells and display screens - in other words, increased
efficiency both when generating electricity and when using it.

Most importantly, graphene can behave as a semiconductor, marshalling the flow of electronic
information by switching between conducting and insulating states. This switching behaviour - the
phenomenon that underpins transistors and thus the entire computing industry - relies on materials
whose electrons are organised in energy states that have what is known as a "band gap". It's the
controllability of silicon's band gap that has made it the semiconductor of choice. As graphene has
no band gap, it looked for a long time as if there could never be a "Carbon Valley" to compete
with Silicon Valley, but that changed with the discovery in 2008 of narrow graphene "nanoribbons".

When graphene is chopped into ribbons less than 10 nanometres wide, its electronic properties
undergo a dramatic change. Because of the way electrons are forced to move through the narrow
strips, nanoribbon graphene does have a band gap. That turns it into a semiconductor ready to
challenge silicon on its home turf.

Cut into nanoribbons, graphene is a semiconductor ready to challenge silicon on

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427362.000-welcome-to-the-highcarbon-future.html?full=true&print=true Page 2 of 5
Welcome to the high-carbon future - tech - 27 November 2009 - New Scientist 27/11/09 7:01 PM

its home turf

Manufacturing nanoribbons remains something of a problem, though progress is being made. At

first it was only possible to make them by breaking up a graphene sheet. This has been done
using chemicals that break some of the carbon-carbon bonds, ultrasound, or with a scanning
tunnelling microscope that saws the atoms apart. With all these techniques, however, the
quantities produced were minute. Then, in June this year, Pablo Jarillo-Herrero at MIT showed
how nickel nanoparticles can be used to cut nanoribbons out of graphene sheets (Nano Letters,
vol 9, p 2600). The method produced such neat cuts that it could provide a way to create
graphene nanocircuits.

Also this year, Hongjie Dai of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, shredded carbon
nanotubes into ribbons using a beam of argon plasma (Nature, vol 458, p 877). Because
nanotubes are already produced in bulk - Mitsubishi, for example, makes tonnes per year - this is
an encouraging route to nanoribbon mass production. With Dai's method, "the possibility of making
tonnes of ribbons is also here", says Mauricio Terrones, a nanotech researcher at the Institute for
Scientific and Technological Research in San Luis Potosí, Mexico.

There are, however, more subtle ways of turning graphene into a semiconductor, and they could
make nanoribbons redundant long before they ever reach the production line. Pereira's group has
shown that inducing a strain in the bonds between carbon atoms generates ribbon-like
semiconductor behaviour in the strained regions (Physical Review Letters, vol 103, p 046801).
"You can generate a ribbon without having to cut the ribbon," Pereira says. One way of doing this
is to drape the graphene over a pre-shaped structure. The strain induced at each curve and fold
will give the sheet a variety of electronic properties. Lay it over an etched channel, for instance,
and the part of the graphene that lies along the bottom of the channel will behave as if it is an
isolated nanoribbon.

This has two advantages over both silicon-based semiconductors and graphene nanoribbons.
First, it is highly adaptable. In silicon, the band gap is created by "doping" a silicon crystal with
various impurities, but once set it is fixed. A nanoribbon, once cut, also has fixed properties. But a
slight change in the twist or the angle of pull of a graphene sheet gives it a completely different
set of properties.

The second advantage is simple: the process is entirely reversible. Remove the strain and the
graphene sheet returns to its normal conducting self. The implication of this discovery, Pereira
says, is that it might be possible to manufacture all-graphene electronics, with every component
created by carefully orchestrated strain on a region of the graphene sheet.

It remains to be seen whether such claims will stand up outside the lab. As Avouris points out,
many of the experiments so far have been carried out in rather favourable circumstances - at low
temperatures that keep electronic noise to a minimum, for example. "The basic physics and basic
engineering has been done, and it's very promising," he says, "but people forget this is done in
idealised conditions." Geim agrees that it's too early to tell whether graphene could be the material
that knocks silicon off its perch and takes computing to the nanoscale. It certainly can't be ruled
out, he says.

Meanwhile, Geim and his team continue to lead graphene research in new directions. Their most
recent advance has opened up a range of possibilities by creating "graphane", a graphene sheet
studded with hydrogen atoms. The carbon-hydrogen bonds act as a sink for electrons, preventing
the material from conducting electricity. The interest graphane has sparked, however, is not really
to do with its electronic properties. Instead, the excitement focuses on the swathe of other new
molecules that might be just around the corner. The changes that the addition of hydrogen atoms
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427362.000-welcome-to-the-highcarbon-future.html?full=true&print=true Page 3 of 5
Welcome to the high-carbon future - tech - 27 November 2009 - New Scientist 27/11/09 7:01 PM

molecules that might be just around the corner. The changes that the addition of hydrogen atoms
induced are nothing compared with what the rest of the periodic table might do to graphene, Geim
predicts. "Graphane has opened the floodgates," he says.

His team is about to unveil several other new materials based on chemically modified graphene.
Though they are still under wraps, Novoselov promises that they will be more stable, more reliable
and much more useful than graphane.

Carbon chemistry is about to get a whole new lease of life, says Rodney Ruoff of the University of
Texas, Austin. As graphene is nothing more than a layer of carbon atoms, modifications with other
elements will radically alter its response to heat, light and other stimuli. On a more practical front,
a carbon-based electronics revolution has already begun, and Geim predicts that there should be
plenty of other applications waiting in the wings. "As far as graphene's magnetic, superconducting
or mechanical properties, or even its basic chemistry, is concerned, we haven't even started," he
says.

Chicken-wire tubes and soccer balls

While graphene is the flashy newcomer to the carbon crew, its longer-standing members are
not to be outdone. Nanotubes, in particular, continue to make the running. "There has been
enormous progress," says Kostya Novoselov of the University of Manchester, UK. "It would
be totally stupid to divert all attention to graphene."

One factor that gives nanotubes a head start is availability: they are being mass-produced
and used in environments as diverse as the oil industry, TV manufacture and golf clubs. The
Korean-based electronics giant Samsung, for instance, is buying in tonnes of nanotubes to
embed in the plastics that encase their microchips. These components have to be flexible
and shock-absorbing, because the silicon chips themselves are brittle. They also have to be
electrically conducting, to prevent the build-up of static charge. A polymer embedded with
nanotubes is an ideal solution.

Nanotubes' mechanical properties are another big attraction. Though just one-quarter the
density of steel, individual nanotubes have 50 times the tensile strength of steel wire. They
can also be formed into composites stronger and lighter than carbon fibre reinforced
polymers, the previous gold standard. Nanotubes are all but immune to deformation: twist
them or bend them and they spring back into shape.

There is still a lot to learn about how best to use these properties. Nevertheless, some
applications are already on the market - and not just in top-end tennis rackets. Seiko in
Japan is making the miniature gears in wristwatches out of a slippery nanotube-containing
material that cuts friction and the consequent wear on these precision components.

The oil industry is also getting in on the act with rubber fortified by nanotubes that can
withstand higher temperatures and pressures than conventional materials (Advanced
Functional Materials, vol 18, p 3403). Equipping wells with O-rings made of this high-tech
rubber makes it possible to extract one-third more oil, says Mauricio Terrones of the Institute
for Scientific and Technological Research in San Luis Potosì, Mexico. "This means oil
reserves could double," he says.

Buckyballs have been less spectacular performers, but still hold some promise. Junfeng
Geng at the University of Cambridge has recently shown that they can be formed into
buckywires that might be useful for drug delivery (arxiv.org/abs/0906.2216). They have also
been touted as filters for fuel cells and for hydrogen storage.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427362.000-welcome-to-the-highcarbon-future.html?full=true&print=true Page 4 of 5
Welcome to the high-carbon future - tech - 27 November 2009 - New Scientist 27/11/09 7:01 PM

been touted as filters for fuel cells and for hydrogen storage.

Michael Brooks is a consulting editor for New Scientist and the author of 13 Things That Don't
Make Sense (Doubleday/Profile, 2009)

New Scientist
Not just a website!
Subscribe to New Scientist and get:
New Scientist magazine delivered to your door
Unlimited online access to articles from over 500
back issues
Subscribe Now and Save

If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication
department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing
options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.

Back to article

PRINT SEND

ADVERTISEMENT

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427362.000-welcome-to-the-highcarbon-future.html?full=true&print=true Page 5 of 5