The world’s hottest new supermaterial isn’t as fancy as you might think; in fact, it’s produced by feeding wood pulp to algae. The result, nanocellulose, is amazingly light, super-strong, and conducts electricity. That versatility lends it to plenty of fantastic possible applications. Here are some of the most exciting. More »
At this point, it’d be more of a surprise if graphene wasn’t an integral part of a mind-bending, record-setting new technology. But, of course, it is. Again. Enter the lightest material in the world: graphene aerogel. More »
Many people rely on headphones and earphones for music and audio playback these days. It’s just a convenient way to listen to your tunes, without bothering the people around you. Now, scientists have come up with some cool new earphone tech. Researchers at the University of California in Berkeley have created the first graphene-based earphones ever.
Without any optimization, a single sheet of graphene can provide a frequency response comparable to or better than a pair of commercial Sennheiser earphones.
The researchers used a graphene diaphragm that’s 7mm across and 30 nm thick, which was sandwiched between two silicon dioxide electrodes which cause the diaphragm to vibrate when power is applied. The material is extremely light and very strong – roughly 100 times stronger than steel – thanks to the unique properties of Graphene’s pure carbon structure.
While this prototype pair is unoptimized for playback, with some tweaks they could be. I’m just curious to see how expensive a production version would be.
[via Technology Review via Extreme Tech]
Graphene is amazing. Or at least, it could be. Made from a layer of carbon one-atom thick, it’s the strongest material in the world, it’s completely flexible, and it’s more conductive than copper. Discovered just under a decade ago, the supermaterial potentially has some unbelievable applications for us in the not so distant future. More »
Feeling smug about those brand-name cans you just bought? A pair of researchers from Berkeley just made ’em obsolete with some Graphene. Conventional gear needs an oscillator that has to be damped down to produce a constant sound between 20Hz and 20kHz. Graphene, on the other hand, can be tailored to do the same job without any complicated, and power draining, over-engineering. Qin Zhou and Alex Zettl found their power-sipping setup to be as good, if not better than the pair of Sennheisers they tested it against. We’re hopeful that Graphene headphones aren’t too far away, assuming Fiddy doesn’t get to the pair first and shut ’em down.
Filed under: Portable Audio/Video, Alt
Source: Cornell University
A team of researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, has created the first ever pair of graphene-based earphones. It might not surprise you to find out that they’re utterly incredible. More »
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphene
Graphene is a very strong, thin and light material used in various applications such as integrated circuits, solar cells and ultracapacitors. Composed of pure carbon, the atoms are arranged in a regular hexagonal pattern in sheet form similar to graphite with thickness of one-atom. According to Nokia, graphene is 300 times stronger than steel.
Due to its thin, light and strong nature, researchers from University of California Berkeley, Qin Zhou and Alex Zettl found graphene to be the ideal material for constructing speaker diaphragms.
Ideal speaker diaphragms are thin and light so that air itself damps its motion to produce sound. In essence, the thinner the diaphragm material, the better the sound quality. Due to the fact that most thin materials are fragile, it is a delicate balancing act between producing good sound quality and constructing a durable diaphragm. This is where graphene shines.
In a test, the researchers used a graphene film that is 30nm thick to construct a diaphragm measuring 5mm in diameter. Using the graphene diaphragm, they created a speaker and compared its performance to a Sennheiser MX-400 earphone. The result is promising. “Even without optimization, the speaker is able to produce excellent frequency response across the whole audible region (20 Hz~20 KHz), comparable or superior to performance of conventional-design commercial counterparts,” they say.
With a promising results like this, it will be a matter of time before graphene becomes the dominant material in the earphones market.
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Re:Sound Bottle Concept, The Bambory Speakers are a set of speakers made from bamboo,
Wireless uploads of big files take for-ev-er. But researchers at Georgia Tech University have plans for an antenna made of crazy thin graphene that would let you transfer a whole terabit of data in just one second. More »
Graphene doesn’t need any introduction: it’s the super material to beat ’em all. But this beautiful video demonstrates how it could transform the future of the gadgets you use everyday. More »
If you’re anxious for all this talk about graphene to materialize into products that can be tucked away in your shoulder bag, you’re certainly not alone. A consortium dubbed the Graphene Flagship, which includes heavyweights such as Nokia and the University of Cambridge, has been selected by the European Union to participate in a program that’ll endow it with 1 billion euros over 10 years to make that happen. The hope is that pairing up researchers and businesses will hasten the development of material and component manufacturing processes for the carbon-based substance, and make it possible for graphene to find its way into products such as flexible electronics, batteries and faster processors. During the first 30 months of the program, 126 academic and industrial research groups spread throughout 17 European countries will be coordinated by Chalmers University of Technology and have their collective pockets filled with an initial 54 million euro budget to kick things off. It’s a long haul, but here’s hoping Espoo’s Morph concept inches a little closer to reality.
[Image credit: Nokia]
Via: Nokia Conversations
Source: Graphene Flagship (PDF)
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