[HN Gopher] Superconductivity switches on and off in 'magic-angl...
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Superconductivity switches on and off in 'magic-angle' graphene
Author : wglb
Score : 61 points
Date : 2023-01-31 01:14 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (phys.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Ah... Graphene, the gift that never seems to keep on giving.
|
| It makes me sad to keep reading all these stories about what an
| awesome thing Graphene and Carbon Nanotubes are, then never
| seeing anything actually happen, in real life.
|
| I have to assume that is because it is impossible to manufacture
| these materials at any reasonable scale.
| m463 wrote:
| I wonder if the delay for these sorts of things is just this
| way?
|
| I mean, the theory of relativity came out in 1905, and
| applications might have taken 70 or 80 years and only in small
| ways.
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| Are you living under a rock? There must be hundreds of products
| already using graphene. It's in batteries, sports equipment,
| building materials, electronics. E.g.
| https://hobbyking.com/en_us/graphene-5000mah-6s-75c.html
|
| https://www.runningxpert.com/en/inspiration/best-inov8-runni...
|
| https://shop.suninhouse.eu/gb/graphene-ir-heating-films/22-g...
| Concretene is 30-50% stronger than standard RC30 concrete and
| does not require steel reinforcement, meaning significantly
| less material is needed to achieve the equivalent structural
| performance. Although the material is more expensive to produce
| (approximately 5% additional cost), the reduced amount of
| Concretene results in 10-20% overall cost saving for the end
| customer.
|
| https://firstgraphene.net/applications/concrete/
|
| https://elecjet.com/products/apollo-traveller-graphene-usb-c...
|
| https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ultron-most-powerful-wire...
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| The battery you linked is just a lipo battery that says
| 'graphene' on it, it doesn't have anything to do with
| graphene other than using the word for marketing.
| dang wrote:
| Hey, can you please edit out swipes like "Are you living
| under a rock"? This is in the site guidelines:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
|
| Your comment would be just fine without that bit.
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| I thought the gentle scolding was appropriate to the scale
| of misinformation shared in this thread.
|
| It is a disservice to the community to downplay the
| relevance of graphene. Modern building and
| urban infrastructure construction are among the largest
| consumers of raw materials globally, with cement and
| concrete manufacturing alone responsible for approximately
| 8% of the anthropogenic CO2 emissions globally.
| https://www.azonano.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=6360
|
| And yeah, you would have to have been living under a rock
| if you are a hacker and you haven't heard anything about
| any of this stuff. This is cutting edge and it's really
| cool.
| dang wrote:
| I think this is a case of the "objects in the mirror are
| closer than they appear" phenomenon (https://hn.algolia.c
| om/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). We all
| underestimate the impact that these swipes have when
| they're in our own comments. You know what your intent
| was and you know that it wasn't malicious; but the rest
| of us don't have access to that state (https://hn.algolia
| .com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...).
|
| Also, there is one of you but thousands of rest-of-us
| (i.e. readers), so your comment will have a statistical
| distribution of responses. Most people won't have any
| problem but inevitably, some tail of the bell curve gets
| activated, and this segment is by far the most likely to
| reply. This is how we end up with seriously degraded
| threads under relatively mild provocation.
|
| It's true that HN's rules come at the cost of a certain
| blandness (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&p
| refix=false&qu...). But it's a mistake to think there's a
| viable alternative to that cost, because you can't allow
| for the creative/interesting/lively kind of swipe without
| opening the gates of flamewar hell. If you have a small,
| cohesive group, that kind of thing can work*, but not on
| a large open internet forum. So we're all stuck with
| having to err on the neutral side.
|
| * I like the analogy of rugby: https://hn.algolia.com/?da
| teRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Whether or not you think the tone is justified, that type
| of thing is just against the rules. User dang is the
| moderator of this site. He will rarely intervene and if
| he does please follow his requests.
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| I know who dang is, I just don't see how the phrase
| living under a rock is offensive? It is a very trivial
| thing in my culture. Perhaps it is different in America,
| and I should be more sensitive, but the same goes both
| ways. To me, that phrase is only lightly ribbing someone
| who is out of touch with tech...on a tech forum. As I
| said, in my culture this is not meant as anything
| offensive and you could be more generous in your
| interpretation of my meaning. Particularly as I went out
| of my way to share so many useful links on the subject.
| deeviant wrote:
| You would benefit from listening more and talking less.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't respond by crossing into personal attack!
| That just makes things worse.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I get the feeling that these "hundreds" of uses aren't really
| leveraging the materials' most effective properties. It would
| not surprise me, if the graphene does little more, than add
| expensive chrome to the brand.
|
| Sort of like using a UPS unit as a doorstop. Looks fancy, but
| maybe not its most effective implementation.
|
| Maybe like the "Truffle Oil" industry:
| https://www.tasteatlas.com/truffle-industry-is-a-big-scam
|
| And, as far as I know, I am not living under a rock. Thanks
| for the suggestion, though.
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| I gave a concrete example. Something that is in use today.
| Concretene is 30-50% stronger than standard RC30 concrete
| and does not require steel reinforcement, meaning
| significantly less material is needed to achieve the
| equivalent structural performance. Although the material is
| more expensive to produce (approximately 5% additional
| cost), the reduced amount of Concretene results in 10-20%
| overall cost saving for the end customer.
|
| https://firstgraphene.net/applications/concrete/
| dahdum wrote:
| All I've been able to find is some test slabs they poured
| in 2021 and a bunch of news/pr articles. It doesn't
| appear to be widely available or used despite the ease of
| doing so (it's just an additive added at the plant).
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| I'm not surprised that there is a lot of inertia. No one
| wants to be the first to recommend changing a 40 year old
| recipe for pouring concrete damns. But "just an additive"
| is really underselling it. The concrete
| slab was setting so fast, and so strong, that the
| builders had begun gliding polishing machines over the
| driest part of the floor while their colleagues were
| still pouring the other end of the rink.
| "Normally, you'd have to wait a week before you could do
| that," he says. The installation, in October last year,
| took less than a day. "By adding as little as
| 0.1% graphene into cement and aggregate, you can
| potentially use less material to get the same
| performance," explains Mr Baker. Reducing the amount of
| concrete used in construction for instance by 30%, could
| lower global CO2 emissions by 2-3%, he estimates
|
| To put that 2-3% in perspective, the UKs total CO2 output
| amounts to 2% of the total. So this tiny little additive
| to concrete could have massive impact.
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-61913871
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| "Concrete example" I see what you did, there...
|
| Like I said, it looks like the only thing that is being
| done, is that they are using graphene to add a bit more
| tensile strength. I suspect that there are other
| materials that would work just as well (or maybe better).
| It's probably not the "killer feature" for graphene.
|
| Reminds me of this old _The Onion_ story:
| https://www.theonion.com/bantu-tribesman-uses-ibm-global-
| upl...
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| So far. Eventually a manufacturing process will be worked out.
| In the mean time there's a lot of theoretical stuff we gain,
| and that theory gets used by other things. Remember that for
| most of human history, scientific and technological progress
| was _extremely_ slow, taking centuries for a minor improvement.
| We 've been absolutely spoiled rotten by the past century.
| peteradio wrote:
| Pretty sure graphene is equivalent to asbestos on the cancer
| scale. Not sure why there is such a pressure to put more more
| more out there before we can assess the impacts.
| Oxidation wrote:
| Until they start stuffing it raw into house insulation,
| making clothing and baby powddr from it and blowing it around
| freely as fake snow, I think it'll be fine for the
| foreseeable future. Even asbestos is generally fine as long
| as it's fixed into a solid form and not disturbed (like
| roofing panels).
|
| And there's definitely awareness about nanoparticles, as well
| as benzene and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons that there
| was not when asbestos was in full swing.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| I worked on Graphene back in 2006 and it has been the 18m away
| from revolutionising everything ever since. The lack of a
| reliable, precise, bulk, manufacturing process means so much of
| these results are basically just theoretical.
|
| :(
| atonse wrote:
| I remember reading a decade ago how they figured out how to
| create it by using sticky tape to pull up a single layer...
| what happened to that?
| MoreSEMI wrote:
| Unfortunately, that is stochastic and will not be
| reproducible or result in yields anywhere close to
| acceptable to industry. There are methods to grow materials
| of the same class(TMDC) with CVD and the like, but
| apparently they don't reach the quality of flakes that the
| tape method results in.
| sroussey wrote:
| We should also figure out what do do with the stuff before it
| ends up in the ocean and landfills. Or at least what will
| happen when it's there.
| dkqmduems wrote:
| This is a poor understanding of the scientific method.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| My comment is not about the scientific method.
| dkqmduems wrote:
| You claim many of the results remain theoretical. Are you
| familiar with the experimental validation of many of
| these results? That is certainly part of the scientific
| method.
| edgyquant wrote:
| You replied to a comment saying they had worked with the
| stuff with a ridiculous assertion that they misunderstood
| the scientific method. Learn social skills if you want to
| actually discuss something
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| It is widely believed by aerospace nerds that the new models of
| F-35 use carbon nanutubes to absorb radar. (Lockheed has a
| patent and the timing works out)
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| A good one I heard: graphene can do everything/anything except
| get out of a lab.
| neonate wrote:
| They should make memristors out of it.
| MoreSEMI wrote:
| I think what is very poorly communicated by the scientists
| writing these papers, is often that it is about investigating a
| "model" system, generally because its is easy to work with such
| system(i.e) shows interesting properties above 4k. Its less
| about producing stuff with graphene, and more about
| understanding the physics behind it. What eventually actually
| gets produced may actually use materials that are similar to
| the model system but not actually it.
| mouse_ wrote:
| It's at best misleading.
| drowsspa wrote:
| How is it misleading? Their research isn't about
| manufacturing graphene.
| rolenthedeep wrote:
| At CES this year, I saw some capacitive sensors (with
| astonishing sensitivity) made from fractal carbon nanotubes on
| paper.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I thought they could be manufactured at scale but producing
| long unbroken strands at scale is the issue. Nanotubes are
| already in a bunch of things that don't require long strands.
| yummypaint wrote:
| There is alot people don't know about solid state physics in
| general. Part of why people love to work with graphene is
| because it makes it possible to begin investigating edge cases
| in the current understanding of the quantum mechanics of bulk
| materials. There is a great deal being learned about physics in
| general through graphene systems.
|
| I would not be surprised if some of this knowledge has already
| found applications in use now like designing better
| photodetectors, or applying a better understanding of cooper
| pairs to improve commercial superconductors. A product does not
| necessarily have to contain graphene or have graphene in its
| name to have benefited from this line of research.
| icambron wrote:
| I have a friend who works in nanotube manufacturing and they
| can do it at scale. My impression is that the industrial
| application of this stuff is just a lot of hard work and has
| progressed slowly.
| DarmokJalad1701 wrote:
| Maybe I missed it, but the article does not say what
| temperature/pressure this material is superconducting at. Also is
| this superconductivity the same as the typical definition of
| superconductivity (e.g. YBCO)?
| sp332 wrote:
| It's supercooled to well below 1K, but I don't see anyone doing
| research with magic angle graphene at high pressures.
| spxtr wrote:
| Matt Yankowitz' "Tuning superconductivity in magic-angle
| graphene" shows how hydrostatic pressure affects TBG magic.
| astockwell wrote:
| Ah, no wonder there's no common daily uses of it yet.
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