Tweets et al,,Article on graphene which Tobyjack posted on...

Tweets et al,,

Article on graphene which Tobyjack posted on another thread.

Graphene 2013: Hype won’t help, say manufacturers

By Laura Syrett
Published: Thursday, 25 April 2013

Industry and public need to be realistic about wonder material’s possibilities

A triumph of design: ImagineNano Graphene 2013 was held in Bilbao this year, home of the Guggenheim museum
Unrealistic expectations about the potential powers of the super-carbon graphene could hinder the material’s development cycle, according to some developers.
Speaking at the ImagineNano Graphene 2013 conference in Bilbao, Tomas Palacios, associate professor of electrical engineering at MIT said that, although there were thousands of scientifically validated ideas for graphene applications, only a handful would make it to production.

Palacios showed delegates a graph plotting the development cycle of new scientific discoveries, showing that from an initial technology trigger the line soars rapidly to a peak of inflated expectations for the invention’s potential.

This is then followed by a deep trough of disillusionment when many of the anticipated applications fail to materialise, before slowly climbing again along a shallower "slope of enlightenment" and finally reaching a plateau of productivity.

"For graphene, we need to reduce the size of this peak and trough, and thereby shorten the time it takes to get to productivity," Palacios said, noting that it takes an average of 20 years for inventions to develop from the point of discovery to full productivity.

He added that it was a tough ask to expect graphene to compete with silicon in the near future: "The economics are against us, and the work of thousands of silicon engineers is against us," he said. "