Abstract:

Recently, scientists and engineers have been getting ever more excited about graphene. The first truly 2-dimensional material, graphene, is found as sheets of carbon one atom thick, but many, many thousands of atoms across. Because of its 2D nature, graphene displays a host of exciting properties: it is the thinnest, strongest, most impermeable and most conductive material known to man. If this wasn’t exciting enough, the discovery of graphene was quickly followed by reports of a host of other 2D materials with exotic names like black phosphorous and silicene. These materials also have unusual properties making the family of 2D nanomaterials the go-to-place for demonstrating nano-applications. Many researchers have been focusing on making 2D materials and finding uses for them. One of our interests is in showing that nanoscience does not have to be difficult. That will be the focus of this talk. I will introduce graphene and other 2D materials before demonstrating how we can not only make them, but fabricate them into useful devices, using (almost) only things found in the kitchen. At first I will demonstrate how simple the production of graphene can be, requiring only pencils, soap and a kitchen blender. Then, how to use it? You will hear about how 2D materials can be printed into surfaces using an inkjet printer and even formed into electronic devices such as light-detectors and transistors. I will also show how graphene can be combined with household sponges, elastic bands and silly putty to prepare state of the art sensors which can detect anything from spider footprints to the human pulse.

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By: Sean Paul Ogilvie
Last updated: Friday, 10 November 2017