Future Technologies unlocked: Atom-thick sheets Discover Future Technology

Future technologies unlocked by atom thick sheet. A new way to share layered materials such as graphite sheets of material just one atom thick, could lead to revolutionary new electronic and energy storage technologies.

An international team led by Oxford University and Trinity College Dublin scientists has invented a universal method to create this one-atom thick nano-sheet of different materials using soft ultrasonic pulses, such as those caused by jewelry cleaning equipment, and common solvents.

The new method is simple, fast and cheap, and can be expanded to work on an industrial scale.

The team publishes a report on the study in Science this week. Every millimeter-thick layer of graphite consists of graphene layers, about three million – a flat sheet of carbon one atom thick – at each other. “Because of its extraordinary electronic properties of graphene to fully appreciate, including recent Nobel Prize, and the physicists hope that maybe one day compete with silicon electronics,” said Dr. Valeria Nicolosi Department of Materials, University of Oxford, who led the study with Professor Jonathan Coleman Trinity College Dublin. “But in fact there are hundreds of other layered materials, which may allow us to create a powerful new technology.”

Professor Coleman of Trinity College Dublin, said:. “These new chemical materials and electronic properties those are well suited for use in new electronic devices, super-strong composite materials and energy storage, in particular, the research breakthrough in the development of efficient thermoelectric materials.”

There are more than 150 of these exotic layered materials – such as boron nitride, molybdenum disulfide and tungsten disulfide – which have the potential for metal, semi-metallic or semiconducting depending on their chemical composition and the manner in which the atoms are located.

For decades, researchers have tried to nano-sheets of these materials to create; if they make an atom-thick layers would allow us to unlock their unusual electronic and thermoelectric properties. However, previous methods were very time consuming and laborious and the resulting material is fragile and unsuitable for most applications.

“Our new method provides an inexpensive, very high yield and very high potential for several hours, and only 1 mg of material, billions and billions of one atom thick graphene as nano-sheets can be made at the same time from a variety of exotic layered materials, “said Dr. Nicolosi.

Nano-sheet using this method can be sprayed on the surface of other materials such as silicon, for the production of hybrid films, which potentially would allow their exotic skills are integrated with conventional technologies. Such films can be used to create, among other things, the new design of computing devices, sensors and batteries.

The work was conducted by a team including scientists from Oxford University, Trinity College Dublin, Imperial College London, University of Korea, and the Texas & M University (USA).

Source Sciencedaily