Welcome to the Age Of Light: Two BIG innovations in Graphene and nano technology can forge a new future for mankind

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<img src="/img/2015/08/ageoflight.jpg" alt="AgeOfLight"> As I was reading today’s news (Science) breakthroughs, I came across two independent discovery/invention but combined makes a HUGE breakthrough and paves the way for a BIGHTER FUTURE!!!

If this peeks your interest read further.

[#1] Invention: Manufacturing Graphene using Tea-Extract

What problem does this solve? Today, manufacturing Graphene takes a lot of time and can only produce/grow small amounts of the material. It takes a lot of energy, raw-material and time - to produce the small quantities of the product. In comes, a new process or method at growing it cheaper, quicker and with less energy. This will make Graphene cost effective to use in the industry. To learn more about the details behind the process, see the links below:

Article, (from International Business Times) Graphene Manufactured Using Tea Tree Extract Paving Way For Cheaper Method

The science behind the process: Catalyst-Free Plasma Enhanced Growth of Graphene from Sustainable Sources

[#2] Discovery: The Nano Lightbulb

What problem does this solve? Today, we have hit an upper-limit on how much we can compact inside the silica-chip. As you may have seen, our computers now has “quad-core” processors which are directly due to the ability to pack more chips/processors per square-inch. But we are reaching an upper limit on this because of three major factors:

  1. Scale: We are already working at the atomic scale. Trying to compress more atoms smaller than the atoms in gold and copper etc will not be possible unless we find new materials that have a smaller atomic structure and has electrical conductive properties.

  2. Heat: Moving electrons in a copper wire produces heat as a side-effect. The smaller and more compact they are then you produce more heat and the very same heat also makes the gold, copper and metal atoms excited that they begin to show signs of expansion. And you know what happens when two copper wires with electricity comes together. You end with a short-circuit.

  3. Growing demand for alloys and metals: The world is reaching a near death of small-circuits because the mines that produce these alloys are getting depleted. So we will reach a end of rare-metals in the future (just like Oil). It’s a limited resource on this planet!

The Solution: Young Duck Kim while trying to clean up some graphene in the lab tried to clean it up in a novel manner. He wrapped up some graphene with a small wire and induced a current through the wire to aid in cleaning the dust on the graphene. What he observed is that the graphene - glowed (almost like a incandescent light bulb). What he noticed is that just like a lightbulb, you can turn the graphene on and off and you can turn it on and off as fast as 10 Gigahertz (possibly 100 GHz) - imagine turning a switch on and off a thousand-one-million times a sec (that’s a lot). And it produces negligible heat dissipation and the graphene does not burn out. So imagine being able to produce a binary-switch (On | Off - 0|1) using this method of switching on a light-bulb at a microscopic level.

And the story gets better, using fiber-optics (instead of copper and gold wires) you can build circuits at the microscopic level to move this on-off signal will revolutionize the industry to produce even smaller, denser circuits that moves data at the speed of light with almost zero (negligible) heat-dissipation! And to produce the fiber-optic cables and matrial - you need silica (which comes from sand on a beach - which we have plenty of on the planet)

NOW THAT’S REVOLUTIONARY!

Now humans can break the metal/electrical barrier to forge us into the “AGE OF LIGHT”.

You can learn more about the discovery here: Article on Popular Science: The Nano Lightbulb

What does this mean?

  1. Reduce the need for rare-metals and alloys = less mining for the raw-materials = greener planet.
  2. Produce more complex devices that are smaller and produces less heat.
  3. Grow Graphene using greener methods = less harm to the environment
  4. High-Performance Computing (HPC) at a nano scale - computers that can process much-much more data in shorter time = better forecasting for things like weather, green-house effects, etc and more profits for businesses worldwide!!!

Greener Healthier Planet that’s more Profitable than ever before!!!

Welcome to the “Age of Light”!!!

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