We’ve covered Graphene quite a bit here on coolingZONE, from graphene fillers for improved thermal performance, to Graphene-Graphite Quilts for Thermal Management of High-Power GaN Transistors, to the economic realities that the rising price of copper might make graphene an economic reality in thermal management.   Now a new article in Ars Technica notes that graphene is still a ways off.

In their piece, “The Graphene Age Isn’t Quite Here Yet”,  they note that its not the price or attributes that make graphene attractive or unattrictive, it is really about what new designs, products and technologies can be developed because of graphene’s unique properties:

The material’s potential is so high that its discovery merited the 2010 Nobel Prize in physics, awarded to Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov. Certainly my fellow Ars Technica writers and I have spilled a lot of digital ink on the subject.

However, with so much excitement, you would be forgiven for wondering if at least some of it is hype. (After all, graphene has been around for a number of years, but we don’t have our transparent computers yet.) For this reason, Nobel Laureate Konstantin Novoselov and colleagues have written a critical, yet optimistic, assessment of the state of graphene research and production.

As they point out, there is a big question that must be answered before widespread adoption of graphene technology is possible: are graphene’s advantages sufficient to use it in place of the materials we use in existing devices? The authors conclude that, to some extent, that’s the wrong question. Graphene’s biggest promise lies in novel applications, designed especially for the advantages that graphene offers.

It is a fascinating read and helps to round out the materials we mentioned in this article regarding Graphene.  Read it here at this link: “The Graphene Age Isn’t Quite Here Yet”