Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers forum about GRAPHENE.

We´re back writing to share some interesting facts. They come from the IEEE, which is the world's leading professional association for the advancement of technology. I received an invitation for the “The Future of Graphene Technology: Implications for the Telecommunications and Power & Energy Industries” Conference in Madrid.

Pic1. Conference people.

Graphene is pure carbon in the form of a very thin, nearly transparent sheet, one atom thick. This wikipedia description is easily findable. But the perceptions of this material for its future implications require a more remarkable research. That is the reason to attend this Conference which took place in Hotel Meliá Madrid Princesa. Hence here it is the summary of this implications as seen by the Lecturers at the event:

The President of the Graphene Technology Event Francisco Javier Alonso gave a short talk to present the IEEE and exposed a powerful use of the Graphene: Water purification. Despite his words were few, a deeper approach to this potential use can be found in this research from MIT.

Pic2. Theoretical Graphene filter for water purification.

After him the word went to the Professor of Electrical Computer Engineering and Director of the Nanoelectronic Research Laboratory at University of California (Santa Barbara – USA) Mr. Kaustav Banerjee. He presented several impacting facts, from which I´d like to highlight the followings concepts:

-          Green Transistors. Electrical devices as mobile phone chargers, laptop computer, LCD…etc. “vampire” the energy. That means they provoke a loss of power whether they are running or idle (sleeping mode). That is not a new discovery, right. But it is a simple introduction to green transistors. The devices mentioned above are running on silicon based transistors. They work fine, but the new generation of graphene based transistors (aka Green Transistors) will perform much better:

Pic3. Vampire power.

-          Advantages of Onion-like (2D) materials. An astonishing way to describe the better capacities of Graphene versus other materials is hereby presented. The onion versus potato comparison refers to the layering of the materials, as graphene is a one layer atomic thing material. The better qualities of this material are presented in the following images:

Pic4. Advantages of 2D materials 1/2.

Pic5. Advantages of 2D materials 2/2.

-          Who is who in the application of Graphene technology to microelectronics. Mr. Kaustav pointed out who is innovating and developing each component related to this field, as seen in the next graphic:

Pic6. UCBS applications of Graphene.

This presentation ended in applauses.

Afterwards the room moved to the breakfast lounge. There I had an instructive conversation with some representatives from Airbus regarding the real applications of Graphene. They were complaining about too much expectations on this material rather to real applications. We continued the talk about plane designs and I dropped an idea about the potential use of the graphene:

-          ¿What about making no window-holes in the airplane structure, and rather install screens made of graphene inside the plane?

That changed the expression in their faces.

Pic7. Concept by Tomasz Wyszo based on OLED rather than Graphene Technology.

Conference calling.

After the break took the word Francisco Guinea, Research Professor in “Instituto de Ciencia de los Materiales, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) – Madrid, Spain”. He talked more like a philosopher than a scientist, and he gave the room an inspiring intial boom sentence:

-          You don´t need to be in Harvard or Cambridge to do Amazing things.

Afterwards he explained the future application of graphene to develop batteries made with Super Capacitors. Once the cost of graphene decrease of course, as now its price reach 10¹⁴ € / kg…that means 100 Trillions of Euros per Kilo (North American nomenclature = 100 Billion in Spain, not so much… ;P).

Finally he exposed the Horizon 2020 program and the goals that Spain could achieve on it. He explained it well and clear by using another “philosophical” sentence:

-          Spain must train hard in Europe to knock out everyone else in the world[1].

And we reached the last part of this Conference hearing the wise words from Carlos Rivera, Principal Investigator of Spanish MOD. He closed the conference talking numbers, as I do, as I enjoy and as engineers like to do:

-          Patent analysis nowadays are dominated by China. There are some other countries as United States and South Korea which are also heavily investing in this graphene patent race:

Pic8. Patent analysis nowadays.

-          The expected date to use graphene commercially is year 2020. This number was provided after one representative from Endesa declared his worries about when they will be able to change all the Energy Transportation System, replacing copper with Graphene.

-          Nowadays, Mr. Rivera declared, lithium batteries improved with graphene technology are feasible.

After the interesting facts about graphene I was invited to take a picture with the speakers. There we started a long conversation which was ended in a pleasant lunch with Mr. Rivera and Mr Banerjee, who also recommended me a Bollywood movie partly-filmed in Spain; Zidagina milegi zi dobaara.

What does it means?                          Life won´t get it twice

This blog is altruistic and it only seeks to share knowledge that is there, but it does not reach all the people who could benefit from it. For any questions HugoP Lisbona will be happy to answer from contact@hugoplisbona.com 

[1] Freely translated to english from its original spanish sentence “España debe hacer pesas en Europa para repartir tortas por el resto del mundo”.