New Graphene Material is Paper-Thin and Ten Times Stronger Than Steel

Where can I get it or how can I make it

Anyone else thinking this would be great for Hyper-Cars??

When we were kids, we imagined flying inside the paper airplanes we made. Now, we may some day actually be flying in airplanes made of paper.

Whoda thunkit?

It definitely sounds too good to be true. If it is true, this team will be up for a Nobel prize!

Hopefully it can be blow molded or injection molded. Let the new age of material science begin.

This would be great if u stacked this up and made armor for soldiers, if it is as light as they say then using cheap armor plates would be feasible and would stop enemy bullets, pack enough of this stuff together and you have a very strong body armor

If something as revolutionary as electricity were invented and posted here on PopSci first, the first comment it would receive would be, "first". That's awesome

I'm not trying to be gross or anything, but they were saying a while back that atoms of helium couldn't even get through.

So if this stuff can really be made THAT thin and be that strong of a barrier, this material would be a perfect replacement for latex condoms.

First, body armor and nano suits, IMMEDIATELY!!!

Second, space craft. Graphene produces a unique magnetic field when compressed, so coat a ship hull with it or construct a ship hull with, run a current through it and compress it. BOOM! You should generate a field that allows you to conduct dark matter over the surface like flagella in water because dark matter is just a dense liquid that everything in the universe is already swimming in. Once we learn to resist dark matter and slide through with less drag, the stars are ours and graphene is the key...

wow i hope this is for real and becomes more common. lightweight material like this will help in costs and movement. steel and aluminum will be replaced in no time.

Discoveries like these only come around once a decade. This is awesome stuff.

Will it be cheap enough though really to be useable? I have my doubts but it surely would be nice since it won't RUST!!

Imagine cars with lifetime warranties against rust.

but not simply our lifetimes--the lifetime of the earth!

At last! A condom that won't break!

@Angry_Guitarist
How would somebody post on here if electricity had just been invented?

Uhhh so that looks like it's as limp as a disk of paper. Is it actually stronger or like stronger on a molecular scale? Show me a vid of it being handled and tested and i'll believe it.

sweet, now we can make helium balloons that don't pop outside of are Atmosphere because its rubber and we could send stuff to space for mere dollars,.....maybe

find articles for a one week period on this site, Mon-sun. if we utilized every invention/discovery in that one week, and integrated it to its fullest potential in one year, the world would be completly different, unlimited energy, electric cars with 200+hp, homes for everyone, in which you would never have to pay for any utilities, world hunger cured, perfect health for everyone, travel to mars on a weekly basis, and maybe beyond, world security, no more terrorists, or WMD's. why aren't we living in this new world?

First application I would want to see is body armor for the troops. Even the Kevlar/Wool weave vests are still cumbersome as hell. They state mechanical properties as well... If it creates mechanical force under current like this story hints at, You could be looking at hundreds of thousands of possible applications for this. I want in!

@lanredneck,

:D

Good question

One word: dirigibles.

@lanredneck That is a good question, but I think it has to do a little with reporting and our misunderstanding of the results the researchers have found. A lot of times researchers will discover something really cool, but in order to report it to the public, popsci (or any other science outlet) will have to make it interesting, so they will extrapolate the findings out to the fullest.

For example I will take this article. The researchers have demonstrated, on a small scale, that graphene can be used to create this new very strong material, so the first thing we jumps to is "we can make super light planes! space travel! body armor!". These things may be true and it is exciting, but we have to understand there are TONS of obstacles in the way before all of that becomes feasible. Also, if in the future this finding becomes not feasible for some reason (cost, doesn't work at large scale, or some other unknown reason), I'm pretty sure we won't see an article explaining why this idea didn't work.

Now we should be really excited, this is good news and is cool science, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. It will probably be a while (but hopefully not that long!) before I'm flying across the country in my graphene plated airplane.

...Stronger bags at convenience stores please.

YES!!! I'm one step closer to having my very own crysis 2 nanosuit!

So cool. This can be used in so many ways. If it really is cheap to produce imagine all the things this material can be used to construct or incorporate into making newer stronger things.

What about nano-batteries. Could this be used to help create new and more powerful nano batteries as well?

Wow...if we humans can stay alive long enough, we just might actually see ourselves traveling among the stars sooner rather than later. Love it!

Oh and one last thing! That means it'll be easier to build airships! Cheaper and stronger! I am so excited!

Oh yeah and one other thing. Isn't one of the issues regarding solar cells producing electricity in an efficient manner really hurting the industry? What might this material mean for the creation of not only cheaper solar cells(which are silicon based) but more efficient solar cells that produce even more energy?

Is anyone doing any research in this area using graphene paper?

BTW All4it, the guys that figured out how to make this did win the Noble Prize in Physics.

This is definitely really cool and I don't want to rain on anybody's parade, but nobody has asked if this is recyclable yet... With all these materials we are creating, we should keep in mind the other possible effects to our environment. Look at styrofoam as a perfect example.
But still, really cool and definitely want to see what this is capable of.

new? damn, i heard about this last year. on a nova spicel, "Making Stuff", saw this and was told it conducted electricity and couased no resistance due to the atom thickness.
a simple way to make graphene is make a mark on a piece of tape and push the tape together and pull it apart a few (hundred) times.

Rockets have what's called a mass ratio. It's the mass of the rocket plus the fuel divided by the mass of the rocket. The higher the ratio, the faster the rocket goes. Obviously, if the mass of the rocket becomes less, the mass ratio goes up proportionally.

This material would make it possible for single-stage rockets to fly into orbit and back with conventional rocket fuels. And not large amounts either. Without the need to shed engines and tanks with every mission, space shuttles could ascend into orbit for the cost of fuel, which would be about the same per passenger as a commercial jet's in an around-the-world trip.

We're talking about the possibility of trips to the Space Station becoming cheaper than trips around the world. It's not just a game changer, it's a planet-changer.

Sorry everyone, it's been around since at least '07. Don't expect anything exciting any time soon.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Superstrong-Graphene-Paper-Is-Tougher-Than-Steel-Yet-Flexible-61055.shtml

And then there was last year......

ww.popsci.com/science/article/2010-07/antibacterial-graphene-paper-could-lead-better-bandages-non-smelly-shoes

@MrBloke: The first link is not just graphene by itself, but a few graphene sheets bonded to a piece of paper used as a filter. Once dry, those sheets would unbond if they got wet again. This article details a sheet of pure graphene, a big difference. A close analogy is like putting carbon fibers into paper vs. making paper out of carbon fibers. There's a big difference.

The second link says nothing about its strength, only that they found out pure graphene in a "paper" form has antibacterial properties. Plus, it had ragged edges, so it likely wasn't produced in a precise process. The new "paper" detailed in this article is a smooth circle, and it might be strong enough to not tear like paper does.

The article calls the "graphene paper" a "composite material" so it's possible there's more to it than just solid graphene. Even if this isn't the case, you need to be more optimistic. Where would we be if everyone was as much a killjoy as you?

Graphene will make very good ultracapacitors that can also be used as structural parts of the car. This will allow storage of large amounts of energy and quick recharge, with very low weight. No heavy batteries, long range, great power to weight ratio. This can make electric cars BETTER than current gas cars, stonger and safer too! Solar and wind can be your power source.
The sooner the better.

can anyone tell me the differences between this and buckypaper

This would be great for butterfly check valves on air compressors. This would also work for a pulse jet flapper valve. This might work for a hydrogen gun rupture disk to build up higher pressures prior to firing. If it has diamagnetic properties, it could be used for rail gun slugs. Sterling engines could use this material for their hydrogen gas ring seals. Silencers could use this lightweight material as baffle plates. Still need another couple magnitudes of tensile for space elevator cables.

a appreciate all the comments, and to Hickey 10. I understand and half agree that there are some roadblocks to these new inventions, mis-reported findings, hopefull outcomes, industrial viability, profit to expense ratio. Its just frustrating to go on to this site sometimes, see all this stuff and say "WHEN AM I GOING TO GET MY FLY CAR". I also know it sounds childish, but there has got to be a better way of pushing this tech to the public. I have always wondered what would happen if we had a place like the the town "Eureka" on the SyFy channel. Where invention and discovery were excelled by a system that broke down these road blocks, and funding was provided by the inventions they created. Invented automated machines produce new discoveries and inventions to products that were soled to the Gov. or to the masses. I know its a fantasy. But what if. Any body got some money i can borrow to get it started?

The next thing would then be to harvest CO2 from the atmosphere keeping the carbon to make the graphene and releasing the oxygen.

It is too bad that anyone feels the need to make a useless comment instead of relating how wonderful it is that technology may yet find an answer to the problems that plague mankind. I for one welcome this event It can mean lighter stronger Airplanes Automobiles that can actually have battery ranges of several hundred miles, as well as some interesting medical advances.

does it make a space tether. A tether from Deimos to the atmosphere of Mars would be a good start.

Finally a new wonder-material that will revolutionize human life as we know it. Haven't heard that this week yet.. If it really is that amazing, the military would have whisked the researchers away to some desert facility to develop better weapons. No one comes up with such an innovative material and gets to casually announce it to the whole world.

Graphene paper circa 2008:

ttp://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.200800757/abstract

Now, if it could only be made transparent....

Bob Stuart
"Stronger than steel" is a rather ambiguous measure. Steel varies by an order of magnitude. Why not give us real numbers for tensile strength, compressive strength, stiffness and work of fracture?

The possibilites of this are actually like endless xD jsut thinking about it gives me the heebie jeebies.
and we need to stop thinking of getting ships into space by using rockets and instead tcreate a giant orbital elevator that uses rail gun technology to lift an elevator to the point of zero g. massive amounts of electricity yes, but with the way things are progressing it wont be long
then ships could be assembled in space, and we wouldnt have to worry about getting them out of the atmosphere, and we could use things (if they work) like the plasma thrust engine (also located on an article on popsci) thats supposed to have its first trial in space in 4 years, (reaches speeds of about 123,000mph... makes a trip to mars in 1 month roughly) a practical thing.... also if we vibrate carbon a a certain frequency it makes a material akin to plastic...
this seems pretty big, even if it was first developed in '07. i cant wait to see what our world is like in 20 years even

We're on the brink of so many jumps in technology its impossible to conceive what will come in our lifetime.

Does anyone really believe, the only thing preventing our current problems being solved by Science and Technology, is the solutions just haven't been found yet? Any new discoveries will be controlled and only be made available to maximize profits for those in power now. We will never run out of energy, it just won't ever be cheap or ha ha ha free!

Would make a good solar ballon material.