So, who owns this technology now? Whoever buys the royalties or whoever buys the inventor?
Or, to whom ever the inventor gives royalties to?
Nobody owns Graphene, it's just an extremely thin sheet of graphite. What companies will usually patent are unique methods of application. For instance Samsung could probably have patents on fabrication processes of its use in semiconductors. When viable, graphene would be used in place of silicon, making chips more efficient; less power, run cooler, etc. However, from what I've read, this sort of application is at least ten years out.
Just as no one owns sapphire, companies have patented fabrication processes of using it as an insulator (SOI) in semiconductors.
It's pretty amazing that humanity can build things that are only 1 atom thick. It's not necessary to come up with totally new ideas to revolutionise our lives, just the ability to make existing things teeny weeny would really change everything. Just imagine tiny robots swimming around in your bloodstream killing any disease before it takes hold.
Anyone have links to the actual patents that were inexplicably not discussed in detail in this story?
Use Google's Advanced Patent Search and type in graphene as the search term. Lots of patents involving it. IBM looks to have done a LOT of work with it based on the number of patents. http://www.google.com/advanced_patent_search
Can you find the same info with Bing or Yahoo or DuckDuckGo?
EDIT: Searching for graphene display returns very pertinent results. Samsung, Guardian Industries, Princeton, and various Chinese researchers are pretty active.
Okay, its flexible and transparent. But nobody but a surgeon wants to handle something one atom thick (it'd slice right through you), so there's going to have to be something the graphene is adhered to, plus all the layers of circuitry that create a display. You know, LEDs LCDs, or whatever that emits the light for each pixel. Are those bendable too? Nope. There seems to be a huge gap in understanding between curved displays (a display created on a curved surface) and usefully bendable displays (which goes well beyond that recent Android phone with a curved display that you could flex a little bit). I doubt that grapheme, on its own, takes us more than an imaginary step toward truly bendable [read: foldable] displays.
I don't think the implication is that a display would consist of only a single layer of graphene. Even if the display surface was the thickness of a sheet of paper, that's still on the order of 400,000 times the thickness of a layer of graphene. That means some incredibly complex arrangements of graphene layers (or perhaps various other useful molecules could be sandwiched in there) while still being transparent and flexible.
Also, a display need not be be backlit with rigid LED's or LCD panels (or at all) by necessity. There have been examples of working, flexible light sources manufactured by leveraging graphene already. So you likely can have your flexible backlighting system. Or even better, what if a graphene display cell structure was actually directly emissive itself?
Is this the turning point? Will Graphene finally make it into a consumer product? I've been following this technology for many years. Every other month it seems there's some miracle claim for the stuff. But nothing ever makes it out of a lab! Maybe it'll be different this time...
Comments
Apple and Samsung are behind this.
So, who owns this technology now? Whoever buys the royalties or whoever buys the inventor?
Or, to whom ever the inventor gives royalties to?
Nobody owns Graphene, it's just an extremely thin sheet of graphite. What companies will usually patent are unique methods of application. For instance Samsung could probably have patents on fabrication processes of its use in semiconductors. When viable, graphene would be used in place of silicon, making chips more efficient; less power, run cooler, etc. However, from what I've read, this sort of application is at least ten years out.
Just as no one owns sapphire, companies have patented fabrication processes of using it as an insulator (SOI) in semiconductors.
Anyone have links to the actual patents that were inexplicably not discussed in detail in this story?
What is this? A display for ANTS?!?!?
>just one atom thick...
What is this? A display for ANTS?!?!?
It's a design goal for the iPhone.
...Of course, we all know what has Apple interested in this tech: the display layer is ONE ATOM thick. Jony Ive just got wood.
I feel that this is more likely the particular reason for interest, thin, bright, low-power displays. At this juncture at least.
All the best.
I still fail to see the point of a flexible screen if the parts behind it aren't flexible as well.
Graphene may well handle that as well. Samsung have produced low quality, flexible graphene field-effect transistors.
Wafer-Scale Growth of Single-Crystal Monolayer Graphene on Reusable Hydrogen-Terminated Germanium
Jae-Hyun Lee, Eun Kyung Lee, Won-Jae Joo, Yamujin Jang, Byung-Sung Kim, Jae Young Lim, Soon-Hyung Choi, Sung Joon Ahn, Joung Real Ahn, Min-Ho Park, Cheol-Woong Yang, Byoung Lyong Choi, Sung-Woo Hwang, and Dongmok Whang
Science 1252268Published online 3 April 2014 [DOI:10.1126/science.1252268]
It's pretty amazing that humanity can build things that are only 1 atom thick. It's not necessary to come up with totally new ideas to revolutionise our lives, just the ability to make existing things teeny weeny would really change everything. Just imagine tiny robots swimming around in your bloodstream killing any disease before it takes hold.
Use Google's Advanced Patent Search and type in graphene as the search term. Lots of patents involving it. IBM looks to have done a LOT of work with it based on the number of patents.
http://www.google.com/advanced_patent_search
Can you find the same info with Bing or Yahoo or DuckDuckGo?
EDIT: Searching for graphene display returns very pertinent results. Samsung, Guardian Industries, Princeton, and various Chinese researchers are pretty active.
Okay, its flexible and transparent. But nobody but a surgeon wants to handle something one atom thick (it'd slice right through you), so there's going to have to be something the graphene is adhered to, plus all the layers of circuitry that create a display. You know, LEDs LCDs, or whatever that emits the light for each pixel. Are those bendable too? Nope. There seems to be a huge gap in understanding between curved displays (a display created on a curved surface) and usefully bendable displays (which goes well beyond that recent Android phone with a curved display that you could flex a little bit). I doubt that grapheme, on its own, takes us more than an imaginary step toward truly bendable [read: foldable] displays.
I don't think the implication is that a display would consist of only a single layer of graphene. Even if the display surface was the thickness of a sheet of paper, that's still on the order of 400,000 times the thickness of a layer of graphene. That means some incredibly complex arrangements of graphene layers (or perhaps various other useful molecules could be sandwiched in there) while still being transparent and flexible.
Also, a display need not be be backlit with rigid LED's or LCD panels (or at all) by necessity. There have been examples of working, flexible light sources manufactured by leveraging graphene already. So you likely can have your flexible backlighting system. Or even better, what if a graphene display cell structure was actually directly emissive itself?
you mean in the last 5 to 10 years.
"Transparent aluminum?"
"That's the ticket, laddie."