Graphene: Smart grid wonder drug?

By Doug Peeples

SGN News Editor

We don't talk about nanotechnology much, but maybe we should. Because there's a new flavor called graphene, and it's got a lot of very bright people very excited. MIT is so excited about it that it just opened the Center for Graphene Devices and Systems (MIT-CG), an interdepartmental unit where MIT researchers and industrial partners work on the science and engineering of graphene-based technologies.

So, what's the excitement about – really?

KEMA's Peter Vaessen put it as succinctly as anyone could in a recent blog:

"Graphene is carbon in the form of single layer atom sheets. As a material it is completely new: not only the thinnest, but also the strongest. As a conductor of electricity it performs as well as or even better than copper. As a conductor of heat it surpasses and out-performs all other known materials. It is almost completely transparent, yet so dense that not even helium, the smallest gas atom, can pass through it.

"Imagine the applications – ranging from innovative computer electronics to transparent touch screens, light panels, and maybe even solar cells. For smart grid, the possibilities of making good conductors out of graphene mixed with plastic, which are more heat resistant and mechanically robust than those made today, are promising. Even the concept of adapting (thickness and conductivity) and self healing underground conductors could become a reality. What do you think about the potential promise of graphene for the smart grid? Are others out there as excited about its development as I am?"

Short answer: Oh yeah. Government labs, academic institutions and private industry are putting their time, talent and money on the line to find more and more applications for graphene. And MIT wouldn't establish a research center devoted to it just to blow some year-end budget surplus. Researchers there aren't the least bit reluctant to say graphene's unique properties could easily "revolutionize materials science and electronics.”

There's a lot of materials science and electronics in smart grid, as our readers well know. MIT isn't just playing with graphene as if it's a new toy. Most prior research has centered on its physical properties. As mentioned above, the MIT researchers are taking it several steps ahead: coming up with the technologies to actually make devices and systems for energy generation, smart fabrics and materials, radio-frequency communications, sensing and a lot more.

It's pretty weird stuff, as KEMA's Vaessen makes abundantly clear. A physical description of graphene sounds as if it came straight out of a 1950s or 60s science fiction story. It has a breaking strength 200 times stronger than steel, but it's so thin that three million sheets would give you a stack one millimeter thick. And that's just the basics. Because of its appearance under an advanced electron microscope, it's commonly described as "atomic chicken wire," a fairly funny reference to its honeycombed crystal lattice structure. It also looks a lot like a waffle.

So there's a lot of work being done with graphene. IBM recently published a paper in the journal Science in which it said it had come up with the first design for high-speed integrated circuits made of graphene. Among MIT's wide-ranging research targets is an investigation into developing cheap, lightweight, flexible, organic (carbon-based) solar cells. The tough part has been finding a suitable material for the electrodes that conduct the current to and from the cells. They're looking at graphene because it just might fit the model of cheap, lightweight and flexible. Bonus: it's also transparent so those electrodes wouldn't stop incoming light.

Graphene to the rescue of energy storage? Click to page 2 >>