Graphene from gases for new, bendable electronics
Graphene from gases for new, bendable electronics. Flexible, translucent and ultrathin, layers of carbon atoms called graphene are also excellent electrical conductors that could find use in flexible computer displays, molecular electronics and new wireless communications. Making high-quality graphene sheets is usually a slow, painstaking process, but now several research groups have discovered ways to make patterned graphene circuits using techniques borrowed from microchip manufacturing, which can be scaled up for mass production. Layers of graphene — carbon atoms arranged in a chicken-wire pattern one atom thick — can be manually peeled away from the graphite in pencils using adhesive tape. In contrast, the new technique causes carbon atoms in a vapor of hydrocarbons to settle onto a nickel surface and arrange into graphene’s characteristic pattern of hexagons. Using standard chip-making techniques, circuit designs are etched into the nickel surface. As the graphene layer...
