Concrete may have found it's killer app in graphene An amazing material just discovered in California may be the key to turning concrete from a building material to something that could be used to develop everything from electronic devices to bulletproof vests. The secret material is a form of carbon that is much harder than the carbon atoms found in ordinary, commercially available carbon and could potentially lead to more fuel-efficient power sources, lighter and stronger metal alloys, improved electronic devices and better body armor. Though this revolutionary discovery by the Materials Science and Engineering Department at the University of California-Los Angeles isn't yet a viable product, it could possibly be in the not too distant future. "In its most favorable scenario, it will revolutionize the field," said UC-Los Angeles Assistant Professor and Materials Science and Engineering Department Chair John J. Casey. "But you can't predict when that will be. It's going to take the best minds in science to really figure out what makes this new material tick." The material has been nicknamed "concrete" because of the potential of its applications. However, the material is more appropriately called "graphene," which is an atom-thick form of carbon that's about one-ten-thousandth the thickness of a human hair. Though this discovery may not come as a complete surprise to the scientific community, the discovery was made only recently after a team of scientists took a close look at a "jigsaw puzzle" of graphite, a form of graphene that is more commonly referred to as graphite. According to J. Casey, this new discovery is not like previous such discoveries of graphene because of the way in which the sample was obtained. J. Casey, assistant professor of Materials Science and Engineering at UCLA, says that the team, led by J. Casey, first identified the existence of a form of graphene that has not been found before. As a result of this discovery, the team then developed techniques to convert the graphene from graphite, which is readily available in the laboratory. According to Casey, the team obtained the graphene by heating graphite in a high-pressure environment. The process of heating graphite under high pressure causes the graphite to "flip" and change from its original state to a different state in which the carbon atoms have two electrons. This is the same result that occurs when graphite is heated in a crucible in a black-powder laboratory. According to J. Casey, in graphite, there are eight layers of carbon atoms in a regular, flat arrangement. However, by heating the graphite under high pressure, the carbon atoms rearrange into a new arrangement that Casey and his team call the "flip-flop" phase. "It's a different arrangement," said J. Casey. "The arrangement in which the carbon atoms have one electron is flipped over and becomes the arrangement where the carbon atoms have two electrons." The result is a form of carbon that has been "flipped" and is now called graphene. According to J. Casey, graphene has several unique and beneficial properties. One of these properties is that graphene can be etched or "flipped" to produce very small (nanometer) lines on a substrate, which can be used to develop nanotubes, an electronic device and a transistor. J. Casey says that by being able to produce so-called atomic-scale patterns, such as nanotubes, it will be possible to design and create circuits that will be smaller than ever before. "You can put the transistor in the nanotube," J. Casey said. "It will take a little practice but you can use these circuits to create a transistor that's only a few nanometers across." J. Casey says the potential uses for graphene are unlimited and could even lead to the development of the first truly high-speed computers. "This is a material that has the potential to do anything," he said. "That's the really exciting part of it." However, J. Casey admits that, to date, the form of graphene that he and his colleagues have discovered has several defects that make it difficult to mass-produce. According to J. Casey, one of the most important properties of graphene is that it is extremely light. This makes it suitable as an ultra-thin, yet strong, material that could be used in a wide variety of applications. "The potential applications are practically limitless," said J. Casey. "Imagine what you could do with one or two layers of this material. What if you could use this as the coating on an iPhone? That would make it thinner, lighter and faster. Imagine a bulletproof vest made with it." According to J. Casey, when it is mass-produced, graphene could be used in a number of applications. However, according to J. Casey, graphene could revolutionize a variety of technologies, including solar energy, electronics and materials science. With the future looking brighter and brighter for graphene, perhaps there is hope that this newly discovered form of carbon could be used to create yet another amazing new invention, a cure for diabetes. "It could help control and stop diabetes," said J. Casey. One reason why J. Casey believes that this discovery may be beneficial to diabetes is that it will provide a more efficient means of delivering insulin. According to J. Casey, in order to deliver insulin to the cells in the human body, researchers have to use a form of insulin that is either taken orally or injected into the muscle. This method is extremely difficult, inconvenient, expensive and could cause side effects. According to J. Casey, a potential solution to this problem could be the form of graphene that he and his team discovered. "We are taking a very hard to deliver material that is a large molecule and breaking it down into a form of very small molecules that are capable of penetrating the cells in the human body," J. Casey said. This could potentially provide a more efficient way of delivering insulin. According to J. Casey, there is an exciting new avenue that can be explored in order to make concrete an important building material. "We can turn the process of constructing buildings upside-down," J. Casey said. When concrete is made into a sheet, the material becomes incredibly strong and light. According to J. Casey, graphene has the potential to be a building material that will be stronger than steel and capable of withstanding an earthquake. According to J. Casey, one of the benefits of graphene, as a building material, is that it is capable of being turned into various forms of carbon that could be used for a variety of purposes. "We can use this to construct things that will be incredibly strong and light," said J. Casey. "Imagine, one day, building things with the same material that exists in the human body." According to J. Casey, graphene's applications are limitless and many are already being used to create new medical devices. "Graphene is the building material of the future," J. Casey said. "There are a number of possibilities, ranging from nanotubes to sensors, that will transform the field of science." One of the things that will be necessary, according to J. Casey, will be to be able to mass-produce graphene. However, J. Casey says that the good news is that, over the last several decades, scientists have become quite good at mass-producing other materials. "The field of mass-producing materials has really taken off in the last 20 years or so," J. Casey said. According to J. Casey, the key to producing this new material will be research and development. "This is an area of research where we are still learning," said J. Casey. "This is an area of science that involves lots of experimentation and hard work." However, according to J. Casey, when this new material is mass-produced, it could lead to a new era of electronic devices that will not only be lightweight but will also be smaller, stronger and consume less power than any other device. "We may be able to make these things using this material in the very near future," said J. Casey. "If we can make this new material, it will be a revolution." The researchers found that graphene's properties could be used to create ultra-thin and very high-strength metal. Graphene oxide (GO), has an excellent combination of structural flexibility and elasticity. And therefore, it can be applied as an effective flexible electrode material. This study demonstrates the feasibility of constructing various metal nanostructures using one-dimensional graphene nanosheets for efficient energy storage systems and catalysis. The high elasticity of graphene endows it with excellent flexibility as well as excellent mechanical and electrical properties, thus demonstrating its potential use as a new type of metal electrode material for highly efficient energy storage devices and related applications. One-dimensional graphene nanosheets were selected because of their intrinsic structural flexibility and great ease of formation and manipulation. Moreover, they have excellent mechanical properties and outstanding electrical conductivity, thus endowing it with superior mechanical stability. This study proposes a new method for the fabrication of such graphene-based nanocomposites in which the graphene nanosheets are formed into three-dimensional structures via self-assembly to yield metal nanostructures with superior mechanical stability and electronic properties. In this study, the formation of graphene nanosheets and their self-assembly are controlled by adding a surfactant. The authors also have reported the chemical stability and electrochemical performance of the three-dimensional graphene-based nanocomposite structures synthesized in this study in terms of their capacitive performances. The synthesized nanocomposite also exhibits excellent catalytic activities for carbon monoxide oxidation and hydrogen evolution reactions. The researchers' work on graphene and graphene oxide is published in ACS Nano. 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