Graphene: Material of the Future

Recent photoconductor development has set the stage for some very exciting technological advances within the decade. Material and size limitations have long plagued photoconductors, any materials able to transform light into electrical impulses. Graphene, and this new process by which it is able to be formed into photoconductors, has the promise to sidestep the previous limitations imposed by older models of production. If photoconductors can make the leap from laboratory oddity to commercially viable technology, we may very well see fast as light communication in our homes within our lifetime.

While we've used Photoconductor technology for a while, they have never been this close to an average joe’s usage.

Herschel Space Observatory, which uses photoconductors
to record stars in distant galaxies. Credit

Photoconductors have been in use for some years as a tool essential to space travel, primarily due both to their speed in processing information and the low power draw of the devices. However, the near absolute zero temperatures at which prior designs made of germanium were required to operate restricted these incredible devices to the cold vacuum of space. The temperature restriction was due to the wave gap of the material making up the photoconductors. A wave gape is, simply put, the internal energy of a molecule. The molecules internal energy must be matched by energy exerted on it before the molecule will conduct electricity through itself. At absolute zero, the internal energy of any molecule is near zero, so electricity can flow unimpeded. The old photoconductors, made of germanium, needed to reduced to this low temperature to operate at any degree of efficiency.

Graphene is very stable carbon in the very hard to change shape of a lattice giving individual molecules no room for movement. This means the individual energy of each molecule is incredibly low, a good thing for conductivity.

Graphene Lattice. Credit

The low energy enables graphene to superconduct at incredibly high (room) temperature, with little resistance given to electrical signals. That is crucial in making long term, efficient devices, such as better batteries or faster phones. Current wires offer small amounts of resistance, sapping power from batteries and plugs making almost all electrical devices inefficient, wasting power. Graphene, able to conduct with near zero resistance to power supplies, can fix this waste and speed up our devices. In making photoconductors easily accessible, we may soon possess superior GPS systems, cellular phones, and even an  internet as swift as light, boasting theoretical speeds of up to 10 GiB/s.

The money poured into graphene material research  has shown new ways of developing graphene with advanced methods, most recently a method by Dutch scientists economizing production of graphene. The Dutch team grew a single atom thick lattice of graphene over a rod, a much easier to extract product than the previous flatbed growth methods. The expirement has greatly reduced the cost of a sheet of graphene, making it much more readily available for scientistsexpirementation with and business’ to implement in prototypes for consumption. By reducing the prior limitation of graphene, it’s high cost, we can only expect further and larger developments in the field.

The graphene's lattice work structure presented initial obstacles to photoconductor development. The molecule's lattice structure dispersed light and electrical impulses rather than focusing it.

Nanowire In Solution. Credit

Through further research, however, scientists have recently discovered that funneling sheets of graphene increases the amount of bandwidth it can carry and the accuracy of its transmissions from light to electrical impulses. They also discovered that an “alloy” of graphene and Cadmium Sulfide further increases the speed of their nanowire, presumably yielding those same benefits in graphene photoconductors that utilize this nanowire.

In making data more readily accessible, graphene stands to pave the way forward, bringing the internet to rural classrooms and underserved communities everywhere. As seen previously with computing initiatives computing initiatives, by increasing access to the internet we greatly vary schools curriculum and more fully engage students. Kids who would have grown up without the power of the internet to learn can benefit greatly from faster and more reliable access in a structured environment. The graphene revolution stands become the next major tech boom as well, boosting our economy in a time of need for the lower class. It is undoubtedly wise to trust this expert, who claims that the money in graphene stands to revolutionize a multitude of fields, the least of which is not computing.

Scientists, spurred on by the massive profit some see in the future of graphene, have been developing many and varied ways of overcoming the limits of todayls photoconductors and tomorrow’s materials.The natural abilities of graphene combined with new production methods and usage could drastically alter the way we think about computation in the very near future. By transforming raw graphene into efficient wires and photoconductors, we all may soon see fast as light communication in our handheld devices and computers.