Graphene applications

OUTSTANDING GRAPHENE APPLICATIONS

Graphene is as useful material as any discovered on earth. Its remarkable properties as the lightest and strongest material, compared with its ability to conduct heat and electricity better than anything else mean that it can be integrated into a huge number of graphene applications.

Its outstanding properties make it attractive for graphene applications in flexible electronics.

Some graphene applications will be or can be the following.

Biological Engineering

Bioengineering will definitely be a field in which graphene will become a vital part of in the future; though some obstacles need to be overcome before it can be used. Current estimations suggest that it will not be until 2030 when we'll begin to see this graphene applications extensively used in biological field as we still need to understand its biocompatibility.

Integrated circuits 

Graphene has the ideal properties to be an outstanding component of integrated circuits. Graphene has a high carrier mobility, as well as low noise, allowing it to be used as the channel in a field-effect transistor. The concern is that single sheets of graphene are hard to produce, and even harder to make on top of an appropriate substrate. Researchers are looking into methods of transferring this one of graphene applications from their source of origin onto a target substrate of interest.

Composite Materials

Graphene is strong, stiff and very light. Currently, aerospace engineers are including carbon into the production of aircraft as it is also very strong and light. However, graphene is much stronger whilst being also much lighter. Eventually it is expected that graphene is used to create a material that can replace steel in the structure of aircraft, improving fuel efficiency, range and reducing weight. With this graphene applications engineers try to create stronger but lighter devices.

Photovoltaic Cells

Offering very low levels of light absorption as also offering high electron mobility means that graphene can be used as an alternative to silicon in the manufacture of photovoltaic cells. Silicon is commonly used in the production of photovoltaic cells, but while silicon cells are very expensive to produce, graphene based cells are potentially much less so. When materials such as silicon turn light into electricity it produces a photon for every electron produced, meaning that a lot of potential energy is lost as heat.

Ethanol distillation 

Graphene oxide membranes will allow water vapor to pass through, but have been shown to be resistant to all other liquids and gases including helium. This phenomenon has been used for further distilling of vodka to higher alcohol concentrations, in a room-temperature laboratory, without the application of heat or vacuum normally used in traditional distillation methods. Further development and commercialization of such membranes could revolutionize the economics of biofuel production and the alcoholic beverage industry.

Other graphene applications are:

• Solar cells
• Quantum dots
• Transistors

  

For more other graphene applications click here.