Collaboration by researchers in the US, South Korea.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: A team of researchers from Columbia University, Seoul National University, and Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science have discovered how to turn graphene into a filament.
By holding the sheet of the cutting-edge material, which is 200 times stronger than steel by weight, they were able to generate light.
“We’ve created what is essentially the world’s thinnest light bulb,” said Wang Fon-Jen Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Columbia Engineering and co-author of the study. “This new type of ‘broadband’ light emitter can be integrated into chips and will pave the way towards the realization of atomically thin, flexible, and transparent displays, and graphene-based on-chip optical communications,” he explained to Phys.org.
By measuring the spectrum of the light emitted from the graphene, the team was able to show that the graphene was reaching temperatures of above 2500 degrees Celsius, hot enough to glow brightly. The graphene can withstand these temperatures because as it gets warmer, it conducts heat less effectively, according to Gizmodo.
“The visible light from atomically thin graphene is so intense that it is visible even to the naked eye, without any additional magnification,” explained Young Duck Kim, first and co-lead author on the paper and postdoctoral research scientist who works at Columbia Engineering.
Yun Daniel Park, professor in the department of physics and astronomy at Seoul National University and co-lead author, noted to Phys.org that they are working with the same material that Thomas Edison used when he invented the incandescent light bulb: “Edison originally used carbon as a filament for his light bulb and here we are going back to the same element, but using it in its pure form — graphene — and at its ultimate size limit — one atom thick.”
According to a report by AzoNano, the global market for graphene is reported to have reached $9 million by 2014 with most sales in the semiconductor, electronics, battery energy and composites industries.