Graphene, nanotubes and buckyballs have moved from the lab into some everyday things, and many more uses are being tested.
In use today
- Batteries. Many lithium-ion batteries in electric cars have a small amount of nanotubes (often under 1% by weight) mixed into their electrodes, where the tubes carry electricity through the material.
- Strong, light parts. Nanotubes mixed into plastics and carbon fibre stiffen some bicycle frames, tennis rackets and hockey sticks.
- Phones. Thin films of graphene spread heat away from the chips in some phones.
Graphene by the metre
Peeling with sticky tape gives tiny flakes. To make big sheets, chemists pass methane, the first molecule in this course, over copper foil heated to about 1,000 °C. On the hot copper, methane's carbon atoms let go of their hydrogens and join up into a sheet of graphene, and the hydrogen leaves as H₂ gas. In 2010 a team in South Korea made graphene sheets this way 76 cm across, corner to corner, and built them into working touch screens.
Researchers are building transistors, sensors and bendable screens from graphene, and molecules made from C₆₀ carry electrons in some experimental plastic solar cells.
Back to four hands
This course began with one carbon atom and its four hands. Diamond uses all four to grip four other carbons in 3D. Graphite, graphene, nanotubes and buckyballs use three, and share the fourth across a sheet, a tube or a ball.
| Form | Neighbours per carbon | Built as |
|---|---|---|
| diamond | 4 | a 3D network |
| graphite | 3 | stacked sheets |
| graphene | 3 | one sheet |
| nanotube | 3 | a rolled sheet |
| buckyball | 3 | a closed ball |
The same four hands hold methane's hydrogens, make ethene's double bond, close benzene's ring and link the long chains of plastics, proteins and DNA.
Quick check
That's the end of lesson 30
In this lesson you found out:
- What graphene is, and why it is so strong and conducts electricity
- How nanotubes and buckyballs are rolled and folded graphene
- Where these new forms of carbon are used