

Nokia begins work on graphene - bhauer
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57567045-94/nokia-begins-work-on-graphene-worlds-strongest-material/

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akiselev
This is absolutely awesome.

Hopefully Nokia's involvement will result in the development of much more
industrialized and efficient methods for making graphene/graphene oxide and
cheaply layer it without using expensive lithography methods. Hopefully they
will actually publish their methods instead of just patenting them.

Moreover, graphene may be cutting edge but it's incredible how accessible it
is to citizen scientists. There is so much to explore and it's been less than
a decade since graphene was first made. Full blown vapor deposition may be out
of reach but there are plenty of chemical only methods or methods that require
low vacuum (basically a bell jar vacuum) or high pressures/temperatures
achievable without a lab. It was, after all, first produced with scotch tape.

~~~
reinhardt
I'm kinda torn about such announcements.

Here's a new material that is stronger, lighter, and thinner than anything
else on Earth. 300 times stronger than steel! One atom thickness! How cool is
that!?

So you have this amazing breakthough and the (first?) application to use it
is... "build cell phones that are extremely light, durable, and less
susceptible to overheating"? Seriously? Should we feel excited for shaving off
a few grams of weight from 0.12 kg toy gadgets and making them last longer?
Most people rush to replace their iThingie N when then iThingie N+1 hits the
stores after a year or two anyway. Are these real problems, even as first
world problems go?

Reading such news feels like hearing about a child prodigy with PhD in quantum
physics at 16 working on ad targeting problems for Zynga...

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cududa
I disagree. For one, they aren't the only company included in this consortium.
Having motivations of productization is actually a fantastic incentive for
them to develop the technology to where it can be manufactured at a reasonable
cost. Their work with the rest of the consortium will do wonderful things to
bringing graphene into everything from consumer electronics to space
exploration.

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diego_moita
There is one thing that worries me about graphene. Its structure resembles me
a lot the structure of cyclic aromatic hydrocarbons such as benzene.

Now, we know that these compounds are extremely stable and resistant to heat,
such as graphene. But we also know that, because of this, these compounds are
extremely carcinogenic.

Therefore my worries: wouldn't graphene also be a powerful carcinogenic?

We had the same problem with asbestos and recently with nano-tubes, right? It
was discovered they are carcinogenic precisely because they are extremely
stable.

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aqme28
Graphene is fundamentally the same thing as the stuff in your pencil. If
graphene is carcinogenic, we've already been exposing generations of people to
it.

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vicks
Most pencils are made of graphite which is a form of carbon.

~~~
DigitalJack
And graphene is made of carbon. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphene>

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jsnell
I think people are completely misreading this. It's not 1.35 billion to Nokia.
It's 1.35 billion to fund research in the area by many companies /
universities / etc, with Nokia being just one of them. (Or at least that's how
I read the article).

~~~
TelmoMenezes
Exactly. This was one of the two European flagship projects that were selected
to receive a big research grant. The other was the Human Brain Project. These
grants are given to consortiums that include universities and private
companies. These were the contenders:

[http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/ict/programme/fet/flagship/6pilo...](http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/ict/programme/fet/flagship/6pilots_en.html)

And here's the consortium for graphene. Notice that the leader is the Chalmers
University of Technology, Nokia comes in 8th:

<http://www.graphene-flagship.eu/GF/index.php>

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maym86
"... and looks a bit like scotch tape, only infinitely thinner."

Sounds like they just stuck this in because they heard the words scotch tape
and graphine mentioned together.

Graphine was first made using a the scotch tape technique by pulling graphene
layers from graphite and transferred them onto thin SiO2 on a silicon wafer.

Also it's not infinitely thinner.

~~~
fastball
I watched the video first, and most of that article seemed to be haphazardly
and sometimes inaccurately ripped from that video

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yial
So, just to clarify my own confusion. It's not actually "2D" it's that it's
one atom thin, so that it might as well be 2D? Or am I mistaken, and it is
actually 2D? Because what I am understanding is that it would still be a 3D
atom? Or is there something that can explain this better. Thanks.

~~~
hkmurakami
Can anything exist in "2D" considering we live in a "3D" world?

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nsns
Rainbows?

~~~
Dylan16807
What? Rainbows are as thick as an entire cloud.

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isalmon
For those like me who never heard of graphene - watch the video at the end of
the page - it's fascinating.

Direct link: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTSnnlITsVg>

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bhauer
Computer. Hello computer. A keyboard? How quaint.

Seems better than transparent aluminum. Reality trumps 1980s science fiction
soon? I can't wait.

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sp332
>Forget diamonds, graphene is now the world's hardest material.

I thought Wurtzite (cubic) boron nitride still held that title?

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BCM43
Damn it, I thought it meant this: <http://jondot.github.com/graphene/>

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nextparadigms
Is Nokia still an European company? Didn't they close down the Finnish HQ and
opened one in US? I hope they don't intend to use any of that money to prop
their mobile business, and that they intend to open the results from that
research at least to other European companies.

~~~
cstejerean
As far as I know their headquarters is still in Espoo, Finland. They recently
sold the building, and leased it back in order to raise cash, but they haven't
moved out of the country.

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jpxxx
So a has-been telephone company that has less than a year to live gets a nine-
digit check of taxpayer cash to do research in an area that is completely out
of their competency?

Sweet job if you can get it.

~~~
robin_reala
No, they’re _one_ of the recipients of the grant.

~~~
jpxxx
Ah, makes more sense. I should read more closely.

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Egregore
Have anybody thought to use graphene in batteries?

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sliverstorm
At first I was worried this was more research in graphene transistors.
Graphene transistors would be awesome, don't get me wrong, but building phones
out of graphene seems both much more achievable, and a much more appropriate
area of research for a company like Nokia!

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bvcqw
If only the government would give me a free grant of $1m!

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njharman
If the run this like their phone business they'll fuck around for years with
multiple, conflicting, self-defeating research projects. While better
companies create whole new industries with graphene. Then throw out all their
research and prototype products, declaring Aluminum is the __future __after
they hire an ex VP of Alcoa.

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hemancuso
A $1.35B government grant over ten years? Talk about proping up your dying
industry. Surely there are research universities and any other number of more
capable research groups that could benefit to divide such a huge grant. This
is a mobile phone company with fairly little investment in materials science
from what I can tell. Unless injection molded plastics count.

~~~
jre
A little bit of context here : The graphene project[1] is one of the two
"flagship" research projects in which the European Union just announced it
will invest €1B over ten years. The other winner is the "human brain
project"[2]. Those two were selected out of the 6 finalists [3].

The thing about those projects though is that no single institution or company
is getting the €1B. In each project, the partners are distributed over all
Europe and include the leading universities.

Now, according to the graphene project webpage, two Nokia researchers will
take part in the project[4]. And from their short bio, it looks like they work
with graphene.

[1] <http://www.graphene-flagship.eu/GF/index.php> [2]
<http://www.humanbrainproject.eu/> [3] <http://www.fet-f.eu/> [4]
<http://www.graphene-flagship.eu/GF/consortium.php#p8>

