when you introduce new materials
you usually enable a new technology and
with the new technology society changes
it has actually been like this all
through history we go from Stone Age we
started using stones we went to bronze
age we had bronze tools Iron Age and so
on and every time this new material came
people got it easier to live and exist
and develop and they got more time to do
more pleasurable things one of the
pleasurable things that you actually can
do is science and we scientists have
used this to be able now to design
materials atom-by-atom depositing them
layer by layer and building materials
with designer properties just think
about silicon and semiconductors it has
brought us the transistor and what has
come out is the i-th we all connected
wireless communication is all in there
and we are still making new materials to
further this but what I'm going to tell
you about is something that actually has
been around more or less all the time
and I would actually challenge you that
you might have made it yourself in
kindergarten or preschool or when you
use your pencils because what graphene
is and what I'm going to talk about is
actually a single layer of graphite and
that's what comes when you do a trace
with a pencil basically carbon coming
out in small molds now that is black
graphene is not going to be black but in
principle the invisible part there might
very well be graphene and graphene of
course has always been there and it was
actually explained with all the super
properties by their additions in the 40s
but it hadn't been isolated in a
laboratory and you couldn't prove all
the amazing properties and in fact we
usually refer to it as a material of
superlatives it means that it has all
these properties and whatever property
you're looking at it usually is one of
the best you can ever make
exist expect to have and from the
discovery or the isolation and the proof
in 2004 it took only six years until the
Nobel Prize was awarded in physics to
undergone and cost a Novoselic for this
discovery so let's look a little bit at
the list of superlatives or properties
well it's a very different material
every material we know is
three-dimensional it has a length a
width a bread and you can only access
the surface but here the material that
is only one atom thick or thin I don't
know
how should we put it it's up to you
right but anyway the point is that you
can address and functionalize the whole
piece of material and Carman as it is
made out of has a special chemical
structure that makes it that this mesh
it looks like a chicken wire this mesh
is the strongest material that is around
and it's still flexible so you have
something that is strong but you can
still bend it so it's a fantastic
material in that sense also have
spectacular electronic properties it's
one of the best conductors it's the best
thermal conductor and it's also
transparent actually a single layer of
atoms as these only absorb 2 percent
roughly of light so it's you can't see
by a naked eye and now you have this
material with all these fantastic
properties and you have all these humans
with all the imagination so of course
we'll make nice things out of it and I
will try to make some examples a few
percent here we call this translational
nanotechnology because it's down on the
nano scale and we're trying to move it
from us academics into businesses let's
start with this simple film I have a
side piece of graphene with the size of
my hand and I've connected
electronically to it it's on a plastic
film and there is also another film
there of a liquid crystal and that
liquid crystal can be turned transparent
and opaque
depending on how much currently to run
through and what you're seeing there you
either see the logger or not of the
University of Cambridge where this
experiment was done very impressive
right but in fact you could use it as a
curtain and you could but you don't need
to end here you can go and look at
everyday products and this is a car it's
a concept car put out by buffs and
Daimler and they actually plan to have
graphene in it they wanted to make the
CT thing biography and that's good
because you just run current through it
in heat and it's a comfortable right but
you can do more I think if you use our
imagination a little bit here why not
eat the windows and defrost them you can
do more you can do smart electronics in
the windscreen that means that you
project all the instrumentation there
and you actually become much safer
driver because the instrumentation is
never away from your line of sight you
can do that another application what of
graphene is actually one of the hurdles
of electrical cars and that is that you
can make very good batteries that you
can charge quickly that's a major hurdle
today and you can also use them several
times so you could put light
graphene-based batteries into this car
and of course we would function eyes the
roof and make it a solar cell so we'll
harvest from the Sun and while we're at
it why not just build the whole car out
of graphene because you make very good
composites of it all from a single layer
of atoms and in fact the first product
that ever came out from graphene believe
it or not was a tennis racquet that
Novak Djokovic actually uses where you
got good strength to weight ratio and he
could smash harder than ever before
these are big things which we are always
developing it brings a better society
and I think my favorite is actually when
you go back into the body and we can
functionalize this mesh of carbon atoms
and we can make a mesh of transistors
that can light up and the funny thing
with carbon-based materials and graphene
in particular is that ourselves like to
grow on it they can act as SCAF
and you see in the picture here that you
can actually disrupt a cell and send the
message via carbon because that's
electrical impulses and you can make
signaling and connecting to the cells
and what the idea here from this German
research group was to use this to make
an artificial retina this is a very hard
thing to make a prosthesis out of and
what you would do is you say that you
have a damaged time that your visual
cord is still working and you let it
interact with this mesh of graphene
transistors and the impulses will go
into the visual center in your brain and
since it has nothing better to do it
will start in interpretating these
electrical signals as a picture because
this is what it's meant to do so what
you do is of course you put a small
camera in a piece of on your glass and
you project it on this mesh and you give
someone who would be blind
some kind of eyesight back this is a
fantastic idea that several of them
these things that I've told it doesn't
exist so it's basically what happens
there are many many applications and
it's basically our imagination that is
limiting here we have to try and see
what we can do with this material it's
also very nice material in the sense we
are tapping into an endless resource
carbon is the fourth most abundant
material around us available to us and
we can make all these things out of it
and we are making things based on
something that is one atom layer thick
and to get an idea how much carbon you
actually need to use I think everyone
has a picture of a football field
yeah put three of them and you need 10
grams to cover the whole football field
10 grams how much is that I had to check
I went into a candy store and I looked
at the different candies right my eye
caught a Snickers bar that's 50 grams so
I can make a technology that basically
could functionalize all the windows on a
high-rise for instance making smart
windows with one bite of a Snickers bar
so we're talking about a technology
where material will never be
issue it's just how we can refine it so
what is hindering us today to move
forward in this it's of course
production we are very good at making
roofing but we can make it the old way
and in small quantities and in any other
way we are still developing now I'll
show you a few here so the initial way
was called mechanical exfoliation or the
scotch tape method just two pieces of
scotch tape a piece of graphite stick it
in between and ripping apart you get
refight on both you think which one is
thinner and you repeat six times and
you'll have routine of course you'll get
the best copy in this way but you get a
square micrometer and that's far away
from that high-rise so you need to do
better ways so we there are ways being
developed all the time and I have a
piece of graphene that I will show you
and I'll bring it up now it looks like
this okay anyone how many percents of my
face vanished when I looked through it I
think it's pretty close to one layer of
atoms it's on a plastic film though like
this and in fact today by this method
you can make graphene on roll-to-roll
productions and they're made 800 meter
long so the methods are improving and in
fact in one way now that we're making it
for many development is basically a
kitchen style method that you put
graphite in solution in your kitchen
blender you run it and you get
high-grade graphene which you can use
for composites you can use it in
batteries and you can also use it to
make touch screens for the smartphones
and tablets around and this is quite
important because just as we said
there's enormous urge for all these
gadgets and these are usually relying on
very rare materials and if we can
replace them with graphene Wow and there
are even some beta models out for this
at the moment but of course as we were
talking yesterday when we were
rehearsing why does the tablet have to
look like that it could be this and you
can have it interactive and the picture
of the Harry Potter newspaper isn't that
far away because you can functionalize
it in many different ways so by this I
hope I've given you a little bit of
flavor that we might be close to a new
material revolution thank you