
Graphene conducts electricity ten times better than expected - DiabloD3
http://www.nature.com/news/graphene-conducts-electricity-ten-times-better-than-expected-1.14676
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skywhopper
This type of result is why the buzz (at least in academic circles) about the
value of "computational research" as a "third pillar" of research is wrong-
headed. Running computer simulations is a great way to compare theory to real-
world data or to extrapolate out the implications of a particular theoretical
idea, but it's still just another tool of theoretical research, and not a
separate type of research in and of itself. The computational results are only
as good as the model, which is all theory.

~~~
chm
From my experience, there seems to be two theoretical/computational research
scientist types: the one who doesn't really care about the numbers but focuses
on equations and what they really tell us, and the one who only cares about
numbers. The latter is dangerous.

~~~
rotskoff
Indeed, in computational chemistry there seems to be two classes of theorists.
The first group attempts to simulate a realistic system using high performance
computing and achieve, typically, agreement with existing experiments. The
second group tries to think through problems and hopes to provide explanations
that don't need the brute force approach. The former model often lacks both
creativity and quantitative accuracy. The latter might be impossible for some
chaotic or complex systems. I have to agree that having "theorists" who simply
are trying to compute some quantity to match existing data must do so very
carefully.

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ChuckMcM
Interesting result. Even more if they can replace a metal mask layer with
this, although given the requirements for growing it I'm guessing it would be
a huge challenge to put it on top.

I like the implication that there is less difference between photons and
fermions than we think.

~~~
powertower
I think the analogy used between the electron and photon travel was just that,
an analogy with no real world implications. And that other statement (at the
end of the article) about new physics was made too quick.

From the looks of it, they've just found that the mechanism that produces the
drift velocity of electrons in normal wires has no relationship to the way
electrons travel in these nanoribbons of graphene...

Their models probably used or were related (or based on) bounce and repel type
algorithms that do not apply fully to this very special edge-case scenario.

In fiber optic cables photons travel close to the speed of light (50% of it or
more) by reflection and the waveguide effect.

In normal metal wires electrons travel something like a few mm or cm per
second, minute, or even hour (averaged out) - because they are all bouncing
against one another.

In these nano-wires / ribbons there is little electron bounce, and some wave-
guide like travel channels present... It has properties of both metal wires
and fiberoptics... But the electrons are still typical electrons.

At the end of the day, there is still a fundamental difference between packets
of energy (that some say are nothing more than vibrations traveling through
whatever dimension) and elementary particles.

Sad, but probably true.

~~~
vanattab
If electrons only traval a few mm or cm a sec how can I ping a server in
Europe an fractions of a sec? I know much of the internet is fiber but surely
there is a lot of copper there to. Could you explian?

~~~
powertower
You have to distinguish between "Electron Travel" and "Signal Propagation".

Take a 10 ft plastic pipe of the same diameter as ping-pong balls.

Fill this pipe from start to end sequentially and fully with ping-pong balls.

Now stick your finger in one end.

While you only moved the ping-pong balls a few inches, almost immediately a
ping-pong ball will come out the other end... The "signal" "traveled" at a
much faster speed than the actual ping-pongs.

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rbanffy
I _always_ love when experimental data does not confirm the theory. Confirming
theories is boring.

~~~
waqf
If experimental data does not confirm the theory, you need a better theory.

If experimental data _does_ confirm the theory, you need a better experiment!

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sdegutis
This research is very exciting. Hopefully we will soon start seeing graphene
being used to implement microprocessors, for massive performance gains, and
possibly other technologies will follow suit. I can't help but feel like this
is start of the leap in technology we need in order to become more like
futuristic human societies in science fiction that have more advanced
technology which, to us, seems like it can only live in science fiction. Yet
it's important to keep in mind that this same thing was said about submarines
as well as other technologies which have been invented since the publication
of the works of fiction which contain them, but were not even thought of at
the time, or at least were non-existent. I'm excited to read this article and
see what breakthroughs we may have had.

~~~
higherpurpose
I doubt we'll see "massive performance gains" from the very first version of
such a chip. The gains will come mostly the same way we saw Moore's Law in
silicon. So we'll get 5Ghz graphene processors, then 7Ghz ones 2 years later,
then 10 Ghz 2 years later, and so on, until we reach TerraHerz a couple of
decades later.

Even if we do see somewhat big gains initially, it will probably have the
price point to match, like we saw with SSDs, which were ~3x faster than HDD on
average, but 10x more expensive per GB.

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deeviant
Expect to see technology featuring this new breakthrough soon __.

 __10-15 years.

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diaz
Something that I've been wondering lately but I haven't looked around to see
if it's simple or possible is that nobody talks about it the material is
reciclable or will it just fill the dumps with more eletronic trash that will
polute on forever...

Besides that I really look for the future of the tech :)

~~~
JulianMorrison
It's Carbon. Sticking it in the ground is a net pollution win. See also
"carbon capture and storage".

~~~
politician
My inner prognosticator envisions claiming a carbon sequestration tax credit
for running an underground data center containing graphene components...

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selimthegrim
I thought the problem was them trying to _slow down_ electricity in graphene?

~~~
sp332
Maybe if you're trying to turn it into a semiconductor or something?

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mrfusion
How does this conductivity compare to something like gold or copper?

~~~
matznerd
Way better! Graphene acts almost like a superconductor at room temperatures
though.

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conjecTech
I'm glad to see Walt de Heer get some publicity. He's been responsible for a
lot of the seminal work in the field.

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wil421
Graphene is mentioned every 6 months in articles and magazines I read and I
cant remember how long this has been going on. Same goes for quantum
computing.

I really hope at some point it will actually become a reality. The skeptics at
the bottom of article dodnt believe graphene will work for digital
applications.

~~~
m_mueller
quantum computing might become reality faster than you think. the next gen
d-wave with 256 qubits has the potential find a commercial niche im super
computing. they already have demos where a combo of d-wave and classical
supercomputer can perform some annealing tasks much faster than classical
only.

~~~
wavefunction
There was a recent article here on HN that seemed to debunk the d-wave
machines, that showed that a classic (non-quantum) algorithm was probably the
best candidate for the results the d-wave produces.

In light of that, true quantum computing may be farther off than you're
expecting.

~~~
m_mueller
You mean the paper that has been countered with [1]? Regarding this I'd wait
and see what the reaction to the counter is going to be, I for one am
certainly not convinced that modeling one particular implementation
classically would disprove quantum computing for _any_ of the implementations.
As far as I've read we have enough examples where only quantum models fit,
which _all_ would have to be debunked.

[1] [http://dwave.wordpress.com/2014/02/04/the-recent-how-
quantum...](http://dwave.wordpress.com/2014/02/04/the-recent-how-quantum-is-
the-d-wave-machine-shin-et-al-paper/)

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acd
What is the next big thing in cpu design?

Graphene based cpus? Light based optical cpus Thz? 3d stackable cpus?

~~~
Tuna-Fish
Of those, 3d integration is the one closest to market. It's already used in
some cellphone chips, and will likely hit mass market within 3-5 years.

Fully light-based CPUs won't happen for a while, but we are getting to the
point where having some optical components to manage long-distance
communication (within the chip, and off-chip to memory) begins to get closer
to feasible. Think less than 10 years.

Graphene based cpus are not near at all, as we are currently at the point
where we are merely studying the qualities of the material. The time from that
to mass production is measured in decades.

~~~
politician
What's your take on Crossbar RRAM? It sounds fantastic, but does it work?

~~~
Tuna-Fish
Maybe? All we have now are glorified press releases. They paint a _very_ rosy
picture, however, as they are press releases, we only get to see the rosy side
of the picture.

The principle of Crossbar RRAM is very fantastic indeed -- take the ideas of
RRAM worked on by other companies and develop an implementation of them that
works on current fabs, tools and materials. However, a lot can go wrong at
nano scale manufacturing, and a lot of the things they are doing have not been
characterized before by anyone else. Frankly, we won't know how manufacturable
it really is before it's in mass production.

Of the next-gen memory options, RRAM is the least disruptive of current
systems. This is because it's properties are sufficiently similar to flash
(specifically, it needs wear leveling, preventing use as universal ram) that
if it wins, it will be used exactly as flash is used, only being denser and
faster.

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eliasmacpherson
At this stage I'd be surprised if graphene didn't conduct electricity ten
times better than expected.

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sirkneeland
All these posts and yet not one gag reference to the graphene condom? Well
Slashdot this ain't (and thank goodness for that)

