Byron King On Graphite
TCMR: What about the critical metal graphite?
BK: I'm fabulously bullish on graphite. It's the next industrial revolution. Graphite is going to become a part of people's lives in a way we can barely conceive. A lot of people's knowledge of graphite begins and ends with the No. 2 lead pencil, but there's graphite everywhere.
In fact, I am speaking to you over an iPhone. The only reason that it's not burning my hand to shreds is that there is a graphite membrane that dissipates heat from the battery. Graphite doesn't burn until 3,000 degrees Celsius, which is above the melting point of steel. If wire bundles or structural steel is wrapped inside of graphite membranes, it's essentially fireproofed.
The applications that we're seeing for graphite are mushrooming, from the iPad to the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, to other mundane but critical applications like fire retardants and suppression systems.
And that's just plain graphite. That doesn't get into the other angles of graphite, such as carbon nanotubes, which are long, skinny, rod-like pieces of carbon that are immensely strong. A half-inch-thick piece of plastic impregnated with carbon nanotubes has the strength of six inches of armor plate.
And then there's graphene, an incredible leap of modern technology. Graphene can be used in computer chips as opposed to silicon. This makes the chips smaller, lighter and more power efficient and heat absorbent.
Silicon's uses over the past 50 years have grown, but we are approaching the atomic limits of what can be done with it. The next step is graphene, and the chip-making industry knows this. It's a quiet revolution, for competitive reasons. But it's a revolution in the making.
Also, I should add that graphene could be added to steel to make a super metal. Graphene-steel could be 200 times stronger than what we know today. These are just some of the technology leaps that are coming down the road.