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Watch That Tiny $74 1.5GHz Android-Powered Thumb-Puter In Action Adamantite! Rearden Metal! Uru! Durasteel! Dalekanium! Unobtanium! Thousands of fictional characters have fought and died for these equally fictional supermaterials. So what is the real-life strongest substance on our puny, sun-warmed planet?
Today, two professors won the Nobel prize for physics “for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene”. The Nobel is the Olympic gold of science. But what is graphene, and why did it earn these guys over a million bucks?
Graphene has been heralded as the new supermaterial of our time. It possesses incredible strength and elasticity, while its exceptionally high conductivity and use in flexible semiconductors could soup up computing.
We know graphene is tough stuff, but Big Blue’s discovering the substance makes a great transistor too, to the tune of a record-setting 100GHz.
Already known as the world’s strongest material and a great solution for shrinking transistors, now researchers say it can also be used to make super-tough, super-small storage.
We’ve talked a lot about hydrogen and fuel cells here on Giz, mainly because it’s the wonder fuel of the near future, but storing dangerous H2 is tricky: something a team at the University of Crete thinks it’s solved. The US Department of Energy reckons a tank should store 6% H2 by mass, and current tech can only do about 2%. The Greek team’s tank is amazing: it’s constructed of two wondermaterials. Carbon Buckytubes connect layers of graphene to make a huge matrix—so far they’ve built a tank with Buckyballs instead of tubes, but they’ll have that finished by Christmas. And theoretically it can store 6.1% H2. [NewScientist]
You know graphene, the super material that’s strong enough to withstand diamond cutters? Turns out that not only may it replace silicon as the de rigeur component of microchips, it’s on track to becoming the next megabattery as well. Engineers at the University of Texas in Austin have found a way to store electrical charge in graphene-based ultracapacitor devices, and their discovery could revolutionise the renewable energy industry.
