Graphene could make internet one hundred times faster


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Graphene could make internet one hundred times faster

The use of graphene in telecommunications could dramatically accelerate internet speeds by up to a hundred times, according to new research by scientists in the University of Bath's Department of Physics.

 

In a paper published in Physical Review Letters, researchers from the Centre for Graphene Science at the Universities of Bath and Exeter have demonstrated for the first time incredibly short optical response rates using graphene, which could pave the way for a revolution in telecommunications.

Every day large amounts of information is transmitted and processed through optoelectronic devices such as optical fibres, photodetectors and lasers. Signals are sent by photons at infrared wavelengths and processed using optical switches, which convert signals into a series of light pulses.

Ordinarily optical switches respond at rate of a few picoseconds ? around a trillionth of a second. Through this study physicists have observed the response rate of an optical switch using ?few layer graphene? to be around one hundred femtoseconds ? nearly a hundred times quicker than current materials.

Graphene is just one atom thick, but remarkably strong. Scientists have suggested that it would take an elephant, balanced on a pencil to break through a single sheet. Already dubbed a miracle material due to its strength, lightness, flexibility, conductivity and low cost, it could now enter the market to dramatically improve telecommunications.

 

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Is there anything the magical graphene cannot do?

It starts to sound awful similar to the "cloud" in software business.

Graphene DOES indeed do wonders, IBM show a transistor made of it... impressive switching speeds (I may be exagerating but it was around terahertz), problem is, to manufacture only one single transistor took them ages because it's not easy to produce it.

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This is good news, the internet can always do with faster components :D

 

Is there anything the magical graphene cannot do?

It starts to sound awful similar to the "cloud" in software business.

 

Cloud was just a rebranding of servers to make it sound less tech-y

 

Graphene will be heard of a lot more as researchers find real world uses for it :)

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Funny, no matter how fast they make it, ill never have it. ATT can't even get off their collective asses and fix the degraded cables in this part of the world, so we are stuck with WiMax wireless inet that you pay for 15 megs, and get 2.4. I wished I could move somewhere where eveything just works, but unfortunatly, thats not an option.

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Cure cancer.

 

I'm presently convinced they're saving it for a rainy day, because too many things at the moment can cure cancer already. Indeed, cancer is being cured of people and people keep dying.

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Oh yay... Graphene, the new wonder material! It can do this, it can do that, it can do EVERYTHING YOU COULD EVER IMAGINE!

Except for one teeny tiny little thing. Bring an actual product to market.

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That's not true. You have dozens of books about it.

An actual product made of the stuff that actually delivers on some of the promises.

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isn't this the stuff they said could be like charged to full in like 30 seconds, and runs for triple what normal li-ion batteries do?

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isn't this the stuff they said could be like charged to full in like 30 seconds, and runs for triple what normal li-ion batteries do?

Among it's many other amazing properties, yep.

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Graphene is but one of several 2 dimensional (1 atom thick crystalline sheets) materials being developed with advanced properties. It's becoming a new branch of materials science, though we're still in its infancy. Once 2D materials really hit it'll be revolutionary, so giggle if you want. Much like 3D printing, which was a novelty 2 years ago but as "Additive Manufacturing" it's used to make structural aerospace parts and medical implants now, it won't be funny very long.

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I'm fairly sure that graphemes racket as nothing but marketing speech, "regular" carbon racket, with maybe a symbolic graphemes layer on the inside of the handle that does nothing but sell it on the "ZOMG ADVANCED MATERIALS !!!!1111" hype.

Graphemes has some great potential in the future when it's actually production ready and out of research stage, heck it's barely into prototype stage yet.

As for 3D printing, it's been used for advanced prototyping and construction for well over 10 years. Home 3d printing however was a useless toy novelty 2 years ago that couldn't make high res quality products, and... It still is. In another year when home rising printers hit then maybe, to bad they're horribly toxic, and still really expensive :/

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  • 2 weeks later...

Some more information I've found about the graphene here: Graphene - just an atom thick and 200 times stronger than steel and a near perfect conductor and here: Jagged graphene edges can slice into cell membranes - it shows how widely used that material can be - so it's worth to keep an eye on it and we will see what more they will find out about it. If anyone have some more info about it, please post it here as well

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