Graphene, the world?s first 2-dimensional fabric
this is Future hardware, with a capital "F", as in who knows when we'd see a product from it. but pretty cool concept, and pertinent to the ongoing debates over silicon CPUs crashing against the barriers of physics.
from engadget.com today:
link to article
from engadget.com today:
Quote:
Researchers at The University of Manchester and Chernogolovka, Russia have created the first-ever single-atom-thick substance, a fabric they call ?graphene?. The substance is stable, flexible, and highly conductive, and researchers believe it could be used to create computers made from a single molecule. Professor Andre Geim at The University of Manchester was able to extract a single plane of graphite crystal, resulting in the new fabric. The hope is that the fabric will be used in the future to create nanotubes, transistors for microscopic computers, that could result in some seriously small electronic gadgetry.
Researchers at The University of Manchester and Chernogolovka, Russia have created the first-ever single-atom-thick substance, a fabric they call ?graphene?. The substance is stable, flexible, and highly conductive, and researchers believe it could be used to create computers made from a single molecule. Professor Andre Geim at The University of Manchester was able to extract a single plane of graphite crystal, resulting in the new fabric. The hope is that the fabric will be used in the future to create nanotubes, transistors for microscopic computers, that could result in some seriously small electronic gadgetry.
link to article
Comments
I think you mean the first single-atom-thick fabric?
Or maybe the first two-dimensional fullerene molecule?
re: my title, i just cut/paste it from the engadget article title. had a nice ring.
Originally posted by imiloa
indeed, there's common-sense 2D and theoretical 2D. which, on topic, this item actually isn't, as even something one atom thick has finite thickness.
re: my title, i just cut/paste it from the engadget article title. had a nice ring.
Beat me to it.
That 2D claim was from a BBC article. They have journalists write tech news and journalists write science news. If this is normal, journalism school should involve at least a BS in physics and biology, as well as computer science.
They have computers in my M$ Access course so I read the BBC translated into Russian for 3 hours a week.
I find other news publications are less ambitious in their reporting, and just plaster the page with quotes (from the smart people) instead of trying to put their own 2 bit thought into it. I hope they don't do the same thing with their news reporting :X
Originally posted by MacGregor
You got my attention, but where did you get the photo?
both photo and text are from engadget.com:
http://www.engadget.com/entry/5338013812480870/
don't know any source info beyond that. the cool bit is the concept. ie: the prospect of rendering circuits with very thin sheets of conductive material.
again, prolly many years off. then, again, if it proves viable, a ton of money could swell up to drive it.
Rat neurons in Petri dish play flight simulator.
In his excellent 1999 novel Starfish, science fiction writer Peter Watts wrote about "cultured brains on a slab" - a "smart gel - that could pilot a plane as well as a person. Now, University of Florida biomedical engineer Dr. Thomas DeMarse has created a "brain in a dish" that can interact with a computer flight simulation.
The "brain" is a small puddle of 25,000 living neurons taken from a rat's brain and cultured in a glass dish.
"It's essentially a dish with 60 electrodes arranged in a grid at the bottom," DeMarse said. "Over that we put the living cortical neurons from rats, which rapidly begin to reconnect themselves, forming a living neural network ? a brain."
The multi-electrode grill is connected to a personal computer running a flight simulation program. The individual neurons are distributed randomly at the beginning of the experiment, and are not connected. The aircraft simulation of an F-22 fighter jet feeds data into the grid about flight conditions; whether the plane is flying straight and level or not. The neurons begin to organize themselves, forming connections to each other. The neurons analyze the data and respond by sending signals to the plane's controls.
At first, the simulated plane drifts randomly. But the neural network slowly learns; currently, the brain can control the pitch and roll of the simulated craft in most weather conditions, including storms and hurricane-force winds.
... continues...
Originally posted by Kickaha
Er, all fabrics are two dimensional.
I think you mean the first single-atom-thick fabric?
Or maybe the first two-dimensional fullerene molecule?
What the hell do you mean? Isn't everything 3 dimensional. 2 Dimensional is on a screen like the movies (unless it's a 3D film)
I did not mean mathematically two-dimensional. I meant real-world two-dimensional. Criminy. A 'two-dimensional fabric' makes as much sense (ie, damned near a tautology) as a 'one-dimensional string'. Real-world. Not mathematical.
In that sense the title of this thread, and the story that spawned it, is pretty damned silly. Either it means the mathematical definition, in which case it is wrong, or it means the real-world definition, in which case it ranks up there with "Water is wet". Cripes.