Kind: captions
Language: en
[Music]
picture this you were thrown into a
dingy room and told you can't leave
until you have created the thinnest
material known to man not only that it
must also be the strongest the best
thermal conductor and as good at
conducting electricity as
copper I know it sounds
hopeless but luckily you know something
about
nanotechnology
you know really really tiny devices and
materials that are less than 100 nanom
in
size of course I don't have to tell you
a nanometer is a billionth of a meter
that's roughly the size of 10
atoms but how do you create something
that tiny it's time to embrace your
inner mcgyver you're going to need a
pencil some Scotch tape and a healthy
dose of elbow grease
a pencil contains not lead but graphite
which consists of sheets of carbon in a
hexagonal lattice when you write layers
of graphite slide off the tip of the
pencil and stick to the paper usually
many layers are stacked on top of each
other but once in a while you get a
single layer of carbon atoms and this is
called
graphine in 2004 Andre game and con Nova
cof created graphine using nothing but
graphite and Scotch tape they placed a
graphite flake onto the tape folded it
in two and then cleaved the flake in
half they repeated this procedure a
number of times and then studied the
resulting fragments to their
astonishment they found some of the
pieces were only a single atom thick
this was particularly unexpected because
it was thought a single layer of
graphite would not be chemically stable
especially at room temp
temperature graphine conducts electrons
faster than any other substance at room
temperature this is because of the
extraordinarily high quality of the
graphine lattice scientists are yet to
find a single atom out of place in
graphine since the electrons aren't
scattered by defects in the lattice they
go so fast that Einstein's relativity
must be used to understand their
motion and this perfect lattice is
created by the very strong yet flexible
bonds between carbon atoms making the
substance bendable but harder than
diamond graphine is incredibly strong if
you could balance an elephant on a
pencil and support the pencil on
graphine the graphine wouldn't break of
course the pencil would for their
Discovery game and Nova selloff were
awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in
2010 and this is only the beginning for
graphine scientists are hard at work
exploiting its unique properties to
create thin transparent flexible touch
screens smaller faster more energy
efficient
computers tough composite
materials and more efficient solar cells
and now consider this is only one aspect
of nanotechnology so in order to think
big you need first consider the very
small