The graphene solution

45:18interfacial engineering. One of the co-authors actually is Stanley Lee Williams who's the original memorist guy for the nature for four for four. Oh my god, what a legend. >> I thought that was a nice like like uh throughput. >> What a legend. >> Um so Joshua Yang who's at USC, he worked with Stanley at HP Labs and then now he's a professor at of electrical engineering at USC. So, this is a collaboration between, as you said, USC Air Force Research and Kumamoto. But it's like the same lab that created the Meisters is now like just upping the game. >> We're We're the best. What do you want us to do? >> Which is kind of cool. Their big idea is to replace that bottom inert electrode.

46:01>> Instead of platinum, we're going to use graphine. >> Okay. So, this is the one that we need to be more stable. Doesn't want to do stuff. >> Yeah. I want it to not talk to the platinum or sorry, I want it to not talk to the titanium. I want them to not be friends. Yes, platinum and titanium, they're friends at high temperature. >> Turns out graphine, even at high temperature, it's fine on its own. >> I'm good. >> Yeah, it's good. And for for very good reasons. So, graphine, it won the Nobel Prize in 2010. Um, it was isolated in 2004 by Andre Gim and Constantine Novyo Salv. No Salv. Okay. They were um in the UK. It's a very funny

46:44story where they actually they they took graphite, which is the stuff in pencil lead. They put it on pieces of paper and then they got scotch tape, put it on the piece of paper and removed it. And the physics between the scotch tape and the graphite that's on the piece of paper would create single layers of graphite, >> right? Single layers of carbon hexagonal shells. Graphite is a bunch of layers stacked together. >> Graphine is a single layer. Okay, it's it's an incredible story because it was scotch tape and a pencil and it won them the Nobel Prize. Sometimes curiosity and just trying stuff is the

47:25key to breakthroughs that will last a lifetime as we again have discussed multiple times on the show. >> And I mean since then we've done loads of research on how to make graphine. Obviously like if you're trying to do industrial scale, you're not going to be doing scotch tape and pencil, right? >> But you wouldn't have known. >> But you wouldn't have known, right? And now people do chemical vapor deposition to make graphine. Graphine has extraordinary properties. Okay? It's the strongest material ever measured. [snorts] It's an excellent electrical conductor. It's transparent. It's chemically inert. It doesn't really mess around with other things. Um, and that chemical inertness

48:06is the key property here. Side note, um, graphine for the longest time was overhyped. >> It was in Batman's suit, isn't it? Doesn't that what he uses in his suit? No, it's in it's in all the movies. >> All the movies. >> And then when when you go out, you're like, "Where is the graphic?" >> Where's the graph? [laughter] >> Okay. It won the Nobel Prize and everything, but like I think if you talk to a lot of material scientists, they're going to be like, "This thing was super overhyped because of those the it was the strongest material. It was a conductor. It was transparent. It was inert. It didn't really find a lot of chem like a lot of industrial applications. So, it's really nice to

48:48see that it's actually doing something. I'm sure there's going to be people in the comments that tell me that there's all sorts of other stuff the graphine does. It's just I haven't heard it, right? And >> I've heard I've heard of silken chips. I've heard of all these other things. >> Carbon nanop fibers like in F1 they use like carbon nanopers in the but that's not graphine >> and carbon nanopers never won a Nobel Prize. So, I'm just saying >> bad PR, >> right? Um this this is a totally new purpose though. >> Mhm. Because a lot of times people like to use graphine for as you said the the myar and Batman suit like because it's strong or it's like electrically conducting. Here we're exploiting the chemical inertness of graphine and the

49:29and it may be finally getting its moment in in the in the light because the the implications of this uh could be just so enormous.