In 2024, you might fold your iPad like a piece of paper before you slip it into your wallet.
That's thanks to graphene, a supermaterial that's stronger than steel, conducts electricity better than copper, yet is flexible like fabric.
Researchers at Saskatoon's Canadian Light Source (CLS) synchrotron are some of many across the globe studying the material that may one day replace silicon in the tech industry.
If clever minds can find a way to mass-produce graphene affordably, the potential uses include wearable electronic devices, packaging that tells you when food has spoiled, armour, and sensors sensitive enough to detect a single molecule.
What is graphene?
Graphene is a single sheet of carbon atoms. It's the same as graphite in pencil lead - just an incredibly thin layer, says Swathi Iyer, a material science post-doctoral research fellow at the CLS in Saskatoon.
In 2004, two scientists at the University of Manchester figured out how to easily isolate graphene by putting tape on graphite and peeling off a layer, says the university's website. They won the 2010 Nobel Prize in physics for their work.
The challenges
Like plastic wrap, graphene easily crinkles and folds unless supported by another layer, says Iyer. Her first challenge was to make graphene that sat neatly on a mesh, which she did.
The CLS team was then the first to combine free-standing graphene with gold particles. Microscopically, the resulting structure looks like a blanket covering gold balls.
Iyer and her colleagues then focused the synchrotron's soft X-ray spectromicroscopy beam onto tiny segments of the graphene sheet.
They found the presence of gold heightens graphene's electrical conductivity. This property could be particularly useful in developing powerful sensors that could detect a single molecule, she said.
Medical lab tests and instruments could benefit from such sensitivity.
See-through supermaterial
Many touch screens now manufactured use a coating of indium tin oxide, which is transparent and easily conducts electricity. It's also expensive, Iyer said.
Graphene is a good candidate for use in touch screens because it lets through nearly 98 per cent of visible light, she said.
The CLS was also the first to examine how X-rays pass through graphene, and found the material is transparent to more than 99 per cent of high-frequency waves.
This property is useful because studying nanoparticles, which have many potential medical applications, requires X-rays.
Iyer and her colleagues' results were published in the American Chemical Society journal, Nano.
Up next
Now that they've seen the effects of gold, Iyer and her colleagues are looking at what other elements they can throw in the mix to "tune" the properties of graphene to their liking.
She's already begun introducing nitrogen to graphene sheets, which make them semi-metallic.
Combining graphene with silicon may also improve conductivity of solar panels, she said.
Although some devices containing graphene are already on the market - Samsung has developed a graphene transistor - it will likely be another decade before they're a significant component of consumer products, Iyer predicts. jfrench@thestarphoenix.com