Hahaha. So that's what that isis nonsense was about. Invading Europe and North Africa. Lol. Shows how little some people know about the north Africans and even less about the Europeans.
Anyway. Back on topic. Graphene.
“The method is simple,” Ye told me. He showed me a vial filled with a fine black powder: anthracite coal that he had ground. “I place this in a solution of acids for one day, then heat the solution on a hot plate.” By tweaking the process, he can make the material emit various light frequencies, creating dots of various colors for differentiated tagging of tumors. The coal-based dots are compatible with the human body—coal is carbon, and so are we—which suggests that Ye’s dots could replace the highly toxic ones used in hospitals worldwide. In a darkened room next to the lab, he shone a black light on several small vials of clear liquid. They fluoresced into glowing ingots: red, blue, yellow, violet.
Tour usually declines to take credit for the discoveries in his lab. “It’s all the students,” he said. “They’re at that age, their twenties, when the synapses are just firing. My job is to inspire them and provide a credit card, and direct them away from rabbit holes.” But he acknowledged that the quantum-dot idea originated with him: “One day, I said, ‘We gotta find out what’s in coal. People have been using this for five thousand years. Let’s see what’s really in it. I bet it’s small domains of graphene’—and, sure enough, it was. It was just sitting right there. A twenty-five-per-cent yield. And, remember, it’s a million dollars a kilogram!”
