IS GRAPHENE A MIRACLE MATERIAL? post by Mannat Chhatwal

Being engineering students, I am sure we all look forward to new materials being discovered. No matter how small electronic devices get, they still generate a lot of heat. These hot spots are created by the activity of wires and micro-chips. Heating, often, leads to damage. To deal with this damage, a new material has been discovered called Graphene. Derived from graphite, graphene is a thin layer of carbon atoms connected within a honeycomb crystal lattice. It is most easily visualized as an atomic-scale chicken wire made of carbon atoms and their bonds. The crystalline or "flake" form of graphite consists of many graphene sheets stacked together. Physicists from University of California, Riverside found that layering a few graphene sheets on top of each other retains remarkable heat transferring properties. The additional levels decreased overall conductivity compared to the single-atom film. The combination of silicon and graphene could work well together within a microchip. It would retain heat and reduce damages caused due to excessive heating. Some possible applications for graphine?s thermal abilities include transparent electrodes in solar cells, heat spreaders within computer chips, and super-fast transistors for radio frequency communications. 

[Is Graphene a miracle material? BY Alex Hudson, BBC NEWS]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/9491789.stm