Graphene Tech Could 'Save' Touch Screens

May 15, 2008 -- Using a transparent material harder than diamond and only one atom thick, researchers in the U.K. have created a tiny liquid crystal display. The display, based on a material called graphene, could one day be used in everything from cell phone touch screens to TVs.

"This LCD is probably the first realistic application that we have seen from graphene," said Kostya Novoselov, a researcher at the University of Manchester and coauthor of the study that appeared in the American Chemical Society's Nano Letters.

Graphene was discovered in 2004 by Novoselov. Since then research into this cousin of coal has grown rapidly.

"Virtually every university now has someone working with graphene," said Novoselov.

While graphene is about as hard and clear as most diamonds, and made entirely out of carbon atoms, its atomic structure makes it unique.

Pure diamond is a three-dimensional crystal made of six carbon atoms shaped, appropriately enough, like a diamond, with eight facets on the crystal.

GraphenePure graphene is also made of six carbon atoms but instead forms a two-dimensional hexagon. Each side of the hexagon forms one side of six more hexagons and so on, until one flat sheet of pure, tightly bonded carbon atoms is formed. A sheet of graphene looks like chicken wire at the atomic level.

Carbon nanotubes, which have also generated a great deal of research in everything from bone repair to electronics, can be regarded as a tube of graphene.

"Anything carbon nanotubes can do graphene could do as well," said Novoselov.

The structure and bonding of graphene makes it as hard and clear as diamond but also able to conduct electricity, something many diamonds can't do, and which makes it ideal for electronic devices.

To create the graphene LCD the researchers first dissolved common and abundant graphite (the hard stuff buried inside a pencil) and another form of carbon bonded to itself, and sprayed the resulting solution onto a glass surface. Once the solution dried, the researchers picked up the small flakes and used them as the electrodes for the small LCD.