We last spoke about Nokia currently looking at other business models as a result of losing ground to other SmartPhone manufacturer’s in the last couple of years, these include looking at existing patents and fresh ideas related to this including licensing their back catalogue of patents to manufacturers after Nokia’s recent patent win over rivals Apple that we covered in a recent article.
What is Graphene
Watch and learn with this great video from Yahoo news via mobile inquirer:
Nokia excited about new technology:
At the end of this article I gave food for thought when I suggested that Nokia could focus less on manufacture and more on Research and Development and then licensing, something they have spent a huge amount on in the last 2 decades (over €40 Billion)…and have now found a new paying customer via the courts in Apple.
Lets face it Nokia have possibly got more technology up their sleeves than almost any tech company out there.
But they can not lay claim to Graphene, the white-hot technology that threatens to alter the way we use mobiles completely.
Nokia are however keeping themselves firmly in with the R&D process related to Graphene as part of an EU lead consortium of interested parties, and we hear that Nokia is teaming up with four Nobel laureates: Dr. Konstantin Novoselov, Dr. Andrea Gelm, Dr. A. Fert and Dr. K. von Klitzing to further the technology as part of the Graphene Flagship program.
Graphene – Made in Manchester via Russia and set to probably take over the World.
“Graphene is a flat sheet of carbon, one atom thick; it is almost completely transparent, but also extremely strong and a good conductor of electricity.”
The Nobel Prize in Physics for 2010 was awarded to Konstantin Novoselov and Andre Geim for their work at Manchester University on Graphene.
“for ground-breaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material Graphene”
Graphene is one of the most exciting materials I have ever seen.
Some amazing facts about Graphene:
Strength – Strongest material ever tested:
It is quite simple a sheet of atoms that you are able to pick up, its inherent strength is like no other material and is reportedly the strongest on the planet.
Weight:
Being the lightest material ever known and not needing as much mass as competitors like poly carbon, and silicon structures or steel to form useful objects, its weight will prove to be hugely beneficial in the production of many things.
Transparency
Professor Tour explains some of its unique transparency properties:
“Another amazing thing about Graphene is that you can see it. You can lay a sheet on a white piece of paper and actually see it. It is amazingly transparent, absorbing just 2.3 percent of light that lands on it, but if you have a blank sheet to compare it to, you can see that it is there.”
That means you can see a single layer of atoms with your naked eye, if they’re made of Graphene.
Elasticity
For a Crystal it is amazingly flexible giving a magnitude of around 20x elasticity, yet it is stiffer than diamond.
Conductivity:
Due to its natural thinness (single atoms) it has the same electro conductivity properties as copper and also an amazing ability to conduct heat due to its light and thin nature, actually holds the record for thermal conductivity and beats diamond yet again.
Electricity:
Just to end Graphene’s parade on a huge high.
Manchester University’s Dr Leonid Ponomarenko points out that Graphene also has
“the highest current density (a million times that of copper) at room temperature; the highest intrinsic mobility (100 times more than in silicon); and conducts electricity in the limit of no electrons”.
This means it can carry more electricity more efficiency, faster and with more precision than any other material known to man.
Possible uses:
As the properties of the material prove to be so truly ground breaking that it compete or betters nearly all properties of current alternatives, so the limit is pretty endless.
For mobile technology:
It easily lends itself to screens and more importantly for the mobile industry; touch screens.
Some say transistors could be revolutionised with Graphene, but there are are some issue due to its highly unique properties, one such issue is its lack of what is termed a band gap.
If you want to use Graphene in transistors, you need what is termed a band gap to provide the isolation necessary if you want it to act as a switch that can be turned off.
It is possible to induce a small band gap in Graphene by doping it. However a bigger gap is needed for technology like transistors, but there is possibly a solution to this over time.
Update on the Band Gap Issue:
Zakaria Moktadir and others at the Nano Research Group at the University of Southampton, UK have created an alteration that aims to mitigate the band gap problem:
A novel Graphene transistor architecture is reported. The transistor has a U-shape geometry and was fabricated using a gallium focused ion beam (FIB). The channel conductance was tuned with a back gate. The I on /I off ratio exceeded 100,000. Previously the best I on / I off ratio was less than 100.
Future of Graphene in flux:
We would like to look further into the possibility’s that Graphene holds but as the material is so new, information related to its potential use is potentially seen as mere pipe dreams, (albeit ones that are very likely to materialise) and as usual we would prefer to inform our readers with a little more scientific merit.
Putting things into perspective:
“One layer of graphite 1mm thick consists of 3 million layers of Graphene stacked on top of one another.”
Take a look at what Samsung’s creative minds think could be a possibility once it is actually brought into production for the mobile industry:
Now apart from the odd 3D part that I can not fully understand how it would work, the actual concept of a fold away mobile phone is actually completely possible as a result of Graphene.
Is this the most amazing material ever invented?…..your thoughts please.
Anthony Munns