Single atom thick graphene 'light bulb' demonstrated by scientists

[HEXUS]

Development has potential for computing, displays, and chemistry applications.

Read more.

[scaryjim]

Have to say Grahene lightbulbs are hardly news: UoM announced the start of commercial manufacturing back in March: http://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover...icle/?id=14206

It's not exactly a big step to go down to single-layer graphene lighting from there. I'm far more interested in the printable grapheme RFID antenna they're working on: http://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover...icle/?id=14545

(and in the interest of full disclosure, I do work for UoM, but sadly not in the NGI )

[edzieba]

Have to say Grahene lightbulbs are hardly news: UoM announced the start of commercial manufacturing back in March: http://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover...icle/?id=14206

It's not exactly a big step to go down to single-layer graphene lighting from there. I'm far more interested in the printable grapheme RFID antenna they're working on: http://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover...icle/?id=14545

(and in the interest of full disclosure, I do work for UoM, but sadly not in the NGI )

Unfortunately, that announcement is a whole load of guff with zero technical detail on what the hell they've actually produced.

[Rage84]

Incredible

[Axle_Grease]

2,500 C. I'm wondering if graphene can be used in heating appliances, and how efficient it would be? It's costly to keep a house warm during the Winter.

[peterb]

2,500 C. I'm wondering if graphene can be used in heating appliances, and how efficient it would be? It's costly to keep a house warm during the Winter.

Depends on what you mean by efficiency. A purely resistive load will convert electrical energy into heat energy with 100% efficiency regardless of what the resistor is made from. But higher temperatures mean that more of that heat is radiant energy which may be more desirable for direct heat, while lower temperatures tend to heat by convection, heating the air, which is better for more comfortable background warmth.

[crossy]

Unfortunately, that announcement is a whole load of guff with zero technical detail on what the hell they've actually produced.

(Disclaimer: my optics expertise is limited to the wearing of corrective spectacles)

Think you're being a bit harsh there. To get all Daily Mail on you, the US and especially the Koreans are doing a lot of research in this area, so any sensible person would assume that GL PLC would want to be very reticent about their products (and that's not to say anything about the PRC-based companies who'll want to exploit the new tech, but not necessarily pay for a license).

Flipside though is that the UoM announcement was of a graphene enhanced light, not a pure one (at least at the man-in-the-street level articles I've read). And no, I'm not putting their undoubted achievements down.

More interesting though is that the coverage of this announcement all seems to be around April 1st - is there significance in that? <grin>

Me, I'm still waiting on those (holographic?) sugar cube size storage devices that IBM talked about more than five years ago that were supposed to be available "shortly".

[DemonHighwayman]

"Interestingly many of the earliest light bulb manufacturers produced carbon filament bulbs, as pictured above, before Tungsten became established as a better material."

Ahh but was Tungsten better ?? Light bulbs were one of the first products to be made with 'planned obsolescence' in mind, in the beginning bulbs could last decades rather than a few years at best.

[scaryjim]

... the coverage of this announcement all seems to be around April 1st - is there significance in that? <grin>

Mostly coincidental to the opening of the NGI at the end of March ... as far as I know (but then, would they tell me if it wasn't? ).

Me, I'm still waiting on those (holographic?) sugar cube size storage devices that IBM talked about more than five years ago that were supposed to be available "shortly".

Oooh, is this an appropriate time for xkcd.com/678?

[g8ina]

Im still waiting for nuclear fusion reactors, promised in a "few years" back in 1975 by one of their guys at a talk at my local ham radio club .

[Xlucine]

"Interestingly many of the earliest light bulb manufacturers produced carbon filament bulbs, as pictured above, before Tungsten became established as a better material."

Ahh but was Tungsten better ?? Light bulbs were one of the first products to be made with 'planned obsolescence' in mind, in the beginning bulbs could last decades rather than a few years at best.

Old light bulbs ran much colder, and the lifespan is inversely proportional to e^-t - the problem is that cold lightbulbs give off red light, while people want white light. To get white light you need to increase the temperature, which shortens the life - and anything at white hot temperatures doesn't last long

[crossy]

Me, I'm still waiting on those (holographic?) sugar cube size storage devices that IBM talked about more than five years ago that were supposed to be available "shortly".

Oooh, is this an appropriate time for xkcd.com/678?

But the whole point of that HDSS project was that it was supposed to be at the "demonstration-but-not-commercially-viable" stage - and that was before Y2K, so I kind of expected to hear something by now! Only follow up on HDSS seems to be the odd learned article, although there's a Wikipedia article which states:

Since it involves no moving parts, holographic data storage will be far more reliable than existing hard disk technologies. IBM has already demonstrated the possibility of holding 1 TB of data in a crystal the size of a sugar cube and of data access rates of one trillion bits per second. The major challenge ahead is expected to be the development of a rewritable form of holographic storage.

The Wiki' author obviously remembers the same press releases that I do - namely that Almaden labs had managed to get a test unit working, albeit under lab conditions.

I can only assume that the project got killed either because it was DoD/DARPA funded and there's no immediate way to get it to kill people, and/or IBM's "bean counters" took the view that this was not something that they really needed to be bothered about.

IBM still have a terse paragraph on it available here.