Added: 1 year ago
From: VegaScienceTrust
Views: 14,208
Sort by time | Sort by thread (beta)

Link to this comment:

Share to:

All Comments (18)

Sign In or Sign Up now to post a comment!
  • Not many people my age (16) are interested in this sort of stuff, but I find it fascinating. I wish you could have been a science teacher back when I was in school, it would have made it more interesting. I also have a question..

    Do you think that in the future cars and other forms of transport might use graphene as the body or engine parts. Thanks, Jamie.

  • @JamieBr95 Thanks for the compliments! Probably not for the engine parts

    (although graphite is a good lubricant), but mixed into the body

    parts, why not? It should make for very light, strong structures.

  • How well will two surfaces slide one on another if coated with graphene?

  • @gosucoaching Answer 1) They should slide very easily, if the graphene could be made to grip to the surface. Graphite is used as a solid lubricant, because the carbon sheets slide over each other in it (there is more detail on this in the graphite wikipedia page).

  • @gosucoaching Answer 2) well .... I remember hearing someone say that the NASA guys tried to use graphite as a lubricant in space and it failed. Apparently the classic sliding of graphite sheets is due to material (atoms and small mols) trapped between the sheets. The opinion was that 'pure' graphite was not a good lubricant ...

  • @gosucoaching Answer 2 cont... if two surfaces were each coated in a perfect graphite sheet they might slide ok till they found the lowest energy position and then stay there till you overcome the 'nesting' energy (for want of a better word: the atoms of the top sheet lying within the hollow created by three atoms below etc.) ...

  • @gosucoaching Answer 3) We've calculated the 'sliding energy' for graphite and the enery difference between different stackings is not very large, particularly if you slide in a good direction. It's true that the 'nesting energy' can be small per small unit area and still add up to a large amount when you have large surface areas in contact.

  • @gosucoaching Answer 3 cont/.. But I think

    another explanation for the NASA result is that the sheet edges are

    terminated with volatile organic species, and you could lose these in

    high vacuum, particularly under irradiation - and unterminated sheet

    edges can bind into the sheet below which would destroy any sliding

    behaviour.

    The small molecule argument would presumably involve a change in the

    lattice spacing, which isn't seen in TEM (but I suppose that's high

    vacuum!)

  • @gosucoaching Answer 4) Google >graphite not a lubricant in vacuum

    So I would guess that in air at normal tem and pressure the two sheets will slide as in graphite as that is what 2 sheets are very thin 2 sheet graphite.

  • @gosucoaching Hello! Thank you for your very interesting question! It caused quite a debate amongst our international community of carbon scientists! Basically there is no conclusive answer from the research scientists to your question yet! The jury is still out!

  • @VegaScienceTrust Glad to see such an extended response. It seems world isn't so perfect as I thought when asking the question.

    Two main theoretical problems in my opinion - griping to surface and terminating the edges. Third would be to perfect world. :)

  • Graphene in its pure abundant form is strong. Is that a correct statement?

  • @guitarraveboy Pieces of 'perfect' graphene are strong yes, people are testing them now

    in composites for this reason.

    I'm not sure there is an abundant form though, the normal abundant form

    is graphite, then you have to do

    a treatment to separate out the layers into graphene.

  • Funny how easily a pencil lead breaks with ALL that graphene in it.

  • @guitarraveboy Two reasons for that - firstly individual layers of graphene are ultra-strong, but each piece in a pencil is normally tiny, and they slide easily over each other. Other reason is that pencils contain a mixture of carbon and clay, and the clay is more crumbly.

  • so they discovered that what's inside a pencil will be our solution for future electronics? great ! -_-

    maybe in 200 years we discover that our mucus is the key for time travel !

  • No wonder I hadn't heard of Graphene! I didn't know it was discovered this year. :P

Loading...
Alert icon
0 / 00Unsaved Playlist Return to active list
    1. Your queue is empty. Add videos to your queue using this button:
      or sign in to load a different list.
    Loading...Loading...Saving...
    • Clear all videos from this list
    • Learn more