In the Background Material to his Nobel Prize Talk in 2010, Prof. Geim Illustrated the Strength of Graphene With His Now Famous Cat Hammock Example (Taken from: Scientific Background on the Nobel Prize in Physics 2010 - Graphne): The Unit Hexagonal Cell of Graphne Contains Two Carbon Atoms and has been of 0.052 NM2. That translates into a density of 0.77 mg/m2. A Hypothetical Hammock Measuring One Square Meter Made from Graphine WOULD THUS WEIGH 0.77 mg.
In this 1 m2 Graphene Hammock Tied Between Two Trees You Could Place A Weight of 4 Kg Before It Would Break. It should there may be possible to make an almost invisible hammock out of single-layer graphene that could hold a cat without breaking. The Hammock WOULD WEIGH LESS THAT THAN 1 MG, corresponding to the weight of one of the cat's whiskers.
"Though very engaging, this picture skips the fact that so far nobody has been able to produce such a large contiguous piece of graphene without grains and stitching," Slava V. Rotkin, Frontier Professor of Engineering Science & Mechanics and Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the Materials Research Institute and Department of Engineering Science & Mechanics, The Pennsylvania State University, TELLS NANOWERK. “Our work shows that a method exists to produce such a perfect hexagonal net of atoms without stitching faults. We found that nature organized Itself in a way to promote, under certain conditions, 'Knitting' such an ideal lattice. »
In Their Paper in Advanced Materials (" Large-Area Single-Crystal Graphine via Self-Organization at The Macroscale "), Rotkin and A Team of International Collaborators Demonstrate that single-grain Growth of Graphne Crystals can be Achieved over, MacROSCAL, 5 × 5 mm substrate).
Specifically, the team shows that graphene flakes, nucleated over a polycrystalline graphene film, synchronize daring growth so as to ultimataly yield a Common Crystal Orientation at the Macroscale.
The Phenomenon of Self-Alignment of Graphne Grains During Their Growth, Which the Team Discovered Experimentally, Has Never Been Observed Before-And At This Time the Scientists Don't Have A Good Model for the Underlying Physics Which Leads To This Effect.
In their experience, the team found that graphene islands self-align over large areas; Later they proven that it was not just a 'large' Area - The Whole Sample Got Involved in this Correlated Growth.
They are performed a lot of detailed studies to proven the effect and understand the details.
"We had a unique group to get it done," Says Rotkin. "Prof. Mark Rümmeli at Suzhou University and Dr. Huy Ta Quang at Ifw Dresden Are Masters of CVD Synthesis and, at the same time, World-Leading Experts in High-Quality Electron Microscopy-While I Was Responsible in our team for theory and optical characterization. In order to discover the effect, we had to combine method that are rarely used together: optical raman microscopy and df-temp of the same sample. The Challenge was to verify the single atom-thick islands' orientation over an enormously large area. "
" When I Saw Coherent Orientation of the Islands for the First Time, This was Amazing - Similar to the Order Appearing In Large Flocks of Birds, "Rotkin Points Out. “Of Race we now Keen to Uncover the Physics Behind This Phenomenon. »
A New Scattering Scanning Near-Field Optical Microscope-A $ 1m Piece of Equipment has been acquired in Rotkin's Lab at Penn State. “This Customized Instrument is set for nanoscale optical characterization-Which will be the best tool for such atom studies at a large scale.»
For Instance, Scientists Want to Determine The Forces Between Grains Just asy Form During the Synthesis Phase.
In The Past, Single-Grain Growth Been Achieved by Other Methods, but their all exhaustive Substrates OR TO COMPLICATED TECHNOLOGS
. Atomic size limit, the variabilities is a major concern, "Says Rotkin. Technologies-from RF Electronics to Flexible Displays
. Research.