Researchers Create Graphite Memory 10 Atoms Thick

CWmike writes "Researchers at Rice University have demonstrated a new data storage medium made out of a layer of graphite only 10 atoms thick. The technology could potentially provide many times the capacity of current flash memory and withstand temperatures of 200 degrees Celsius and radiation that would make solid-state disk memory disintegrate. 'Though we grow it from the vapor phase, this material [graphene] is just like graphite in a pencil. You slide these right off the end of your pencil onto paper. If you were to place Scotch tape over it and pull up, you can sometimes pull up as small as one sheet of graphene. It is a little under 1 nanometer thick,' Professor James Tour said."

10 Atoms thick?

[Anonymous Coward]

As per wikipedia,

Diameter range: 62 pm (He) to 520 pm (Cs) (data page)

Atom @ Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]

It seems that the "thickness" of an atom varies. I've never understood why it is used as a unit of measure.

Re:10 Atoms thick?

[treeves]

You'll notice from the data you found that they vary by less than one order of magnitude so it's still a useful approximate measure. Other "measurements" vary as well, for example "floors" to measure the height of a building, "blocks" to measure distance in a city or town, "car lengths" to measure tailgating, "gnat's asses"...oh never mind.

"Though we grow it from the vapor phase"

[NinthAgendaDotCom]

Interesting. That is how artificial diamonds are formed too... vapor forming around a diamond seed in a vacuum chamber.

Re:Graphene balloons

[oasisbob]

I've worked with graphite before in a lab (we used it as a substrate for STM [wikipedia.org].

Using scotch tape to pull up layers of graphite must be a common technique: we used it too. There are many kinds of graphite. Using crystalline graphite (found in nature), you could use the tape to pull up a nice thin layer.

Being around improvised solutions using common materials was one of my favorite things about lab work.

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Re:10 Atoms thick?

[elashish14]

Graphene is an array of sp2 hybridized carbon, meaning the HOMO is the pi bonding orbital, and the LUMO is the pi* orbital. The average electronic radius in the p orbital is a bit under 4 times the Bohr radius = 4*53 pm ~ 200 pm and it's safe to assume that the average distance of the pi bonding orbital is close. Since bonding must take place in the higher energy pi* orbital, it must be >>200pm. 1000pm sounds about right.

The math isn't hard, but I have to take a shit so I can't do it right now.