Why highly oriented pyrolytic graphite matters

32:55just like make the thing hot from variety of different mechanisms. So that's my high pressure and then high temperature I can just like make the thing hot from variety of different mechanisms. So that's my high pressure and then high temperature I can just like make the thing hot from variety of different mechanisms. So that's my high pressure and then high temperature I can just like make the thing hot from variety of different This is a photo from their supplement. On the top is the normal graphite that you use in lead in pencil lead. Graphite is a bunch of layers of carbon rings, okay? It's layers on layers of carbon rings. But in naturally occurring graphite, the layers are kind of, you know, off each other. They're not completely flat, okay? What I want is exactly flat graphite, okay? Not off where like some some carbon atoms are closer than other carbon atoms. I want exactly flat. So they created a high

33:37pressure environment and then a rapid cooling thing to make your amorphous graphite, so to speak, this very highly oriented pyrolytic graphite. Now, what is the advantage there? The advantage there is that the graphite itself has ABAB memory. Very interesting. Yeah, yep, yep. Yep. The cooking the material that they're trying to cook with already has the geometry of their end product. Right. And and naturally occurring graphite is naturally imperfect. And those imperfections lead to getting to lead to the destination of the the

34:19global minima. But and oh, that's so interesting. But because we are now making sure that we're having A5 Wagyu beef going in and not around the corner grocery store beef going in. We're going to get exactly what we want as the chef on the outcome. >> Exactly. And so this you can already see the ABAB stacking. You can imagine the lower layer is B, the upper layer is A, and now I can just stack this on top of one another, right? >> Yes. >> And so now when I press on them, perhaps that geometry is going to be preserved. >> That makes sense. >> There's another problem though. Just cuz you start with ABAB graphite, right? It's going to be ABAB one on top of the other. If I push from all directions,

35:02that might cause the graphite to scrunch up losing that symmetry. So I need to be able to only press from the top and bottom. >> Okay. >> Okay? Now in any type of press that's very difficult. But what they did was they added a layer of aluminum on top and the bottom. And what that alumina does is not distribute any of the stress laterally just because of the way aluminum works. And all of the stress was in the up and down direction. So they had the press and on the press they layered aluminum on the top and the bottom. So that when they were pressing, the stress was only in the vertical direction. >> Yes. >> Okay? >> Yes. >> Once they do that,

35:42finally this is how it should work in theory. They did large-scale molecular dynamics simulations. Here we've got layers on layers of that ABAB graphite. >> Yes. >> And you can see a tiny defect is forming and as you press, the orange is that hexagonal diamond. It rapidly forms, right? There's kind of a nucleation zone where the defect kind of starts and the layers of graphite are covalently bonding to one another. And then as you press more and more, it rapidly sort of like like a like a contagion, >> Yes. >> right? That that bond sort of spreads out. >> It it propagates from this like initial inciting incident location. And this is so

36:24now understanding the the component parts, this makes a lot more sense in terms of, you know,