By Siobhan Becker and Autumn McLeod
A scientific leap by a Stony Brook graduate student could lead to bendable phones, paper thin electronics with transparent screens, faster computer chips and even advances in medicine.
Fen Guan and her partner, Piranavan Kumaravadivel, came up with a system to change the strain in graphene, making it more flexible. They then determined whether it could conduct electricity, which would make it viable for use in technology.
Fen Guan received an award funded by Brookhaven Science Associates for her work in mechanically manipulating graphene to produce flexible graphene nanoelectromechanical resonators.
Scientists have been working on a material that can change the course of technology using graphene.
“When this material came out people predicted it would be very popular,” Guan said.
Graphene is a two-dimensional material that is as tough as a diamond, yet has elasticity comparable to rubber. It consists of a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb lattice pattern.
Graphene is the thinnest material in the world and one of the strongest after the new form of carbon called carbyne, according to an article in the MIT Technology Review.
The biggest challenge for scientists is making graphene work within a transistor, Guan said. Currently, graphene can only turn on in a transistor and cannot be switched off.
Guan is trying to overcome this obstacle by bending and stretching graphene beyond its one percent elongation to change its properties. The key is in the setup that she and her partner created Guan said.
The two fabricated a suspended graphene bridge with electrical contacts and set the whole device on a substrate.
“To translate a prototype or laboratory demonstrator into a real world application takes time and has a number of technological, economic and socio-political challenges,” Dr. Aravind Vijayaraghavan, a lecturer in nanomaterials at the University of Manchester who has already developed prototypes of bendable electronics using graphene, said.”
Vijayaraghavan says the main challenge has been going beyond the prototype phase and hopes that in the near future, graphene can be produced with competitive cost and reliability so they can enter the market.
“These can’t be solved by scientists alone, and so scientists and industry are working together now to take these bendable electronics prototypes from the lab to the market,” Vijayaraghavan said.
CEO of Graphene Laboratories Inc., Elena Polakova, uses graphene to improve plastic materials and works. The company creates high-performance graphene-enhanced materials for 3D printing and is a well-known graphene distributor.
“We are making advanced plastic materials so what we do is 85 percent plastic and 15 percent graphene,” Polyakova said. “We can make a new generation of advanced plastic material.”
Assistant professor at Stony Brook’s department of Biomedical Engineering Balaji Sitharaman, has found a way to incorporate graphene into medical technology.
Sitharaman has created a potentially safer and cost effective MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) contrast agent to detect diseases and improve diagnosis. The key ingredient to his development was graphene, which is less toxic to the human body than the regularly used agent gadolinium.
The graphene-based MRI has not reached human clinical trials yet.
“It (graphene) has not reached commercialization at least not for biomedical applications… or else it would be introduced into the body,” Sitharaman said. “It would be another five years if not more before the first product is made and reaches the market and doctors will start using them.
Guan hopes to use her research to introduce into technology and would also consider working with other two-dimensional material to produce similar results.
Bendable cell phones and transparent screens are likely just a few years from being introduced, Amin Salehi-Khojin, assistant professor of mechanical and industrial engineering at the University of Illinois, said.
Faculty member of Stony Brook’s Material Science and Engineering department Vladimir Samuilov does not believe that graphene is too far from its incorporation into technology.
“Graphene is very prominent…and is already being applied in different applications,” Samuilov said. “Graphene is being used in batteries and has already been applied through different technology.”
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Autumn's Nation 