Graphene is a very thin material (just one atom thick) and it is capable of conducting electricity. While being very strong (100 times stronger than steel), the carbon-based material is also extremely flexible. The material has been used for coating power plants, to making flexible computing screens and filtering out contaminants from water.
In a new application, graphene is the basis of a new, ultra-thin light bulb. The light itself (more of a filament than a bulb) is an incredible single atom thick.
With the new bulb, graphene is used as the filament inside the bulb. Here, scientists added tiny strips of graphene to metal electrodes. The strips were then placed above the substrate and current was then passed through the filaments in order to heat them up.
The filament is then incorporated into a computer chip. When a charge is passed through, the filament lights up. Graphene does not melt the chip because the material is a very poor conductor of electricity.
In a research note, one of the lead scientists, Myung-Ho Bae explains: “These unique thermal properties allow us to heat the suspended graphene up to half of the temperature of the sun, and improve efficiency 1000 times, as compared to graphene on a solid substrate.”
The idea behind the bulb-on-a-chip study is to advance communications systems and computer screens, to pave the way for even thinner devices with improved resolution. The new bulbs will, in theory, act as photonic devices.
Further details are shown in the video below:
The research was performed at Columbia Engineering. The research has appeared in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, in an article titled “Bright Visible Light Emission from Graphene.”
