Hacker News Reader

Comment by CoffeeDregs | Hacker News Reader

Graphene and, more generally, carbon nanotubes are exciting because they have something-for-everyone. Silicon, plastics, water are examples of molecules or structures that have also been spun into important applications for just about every vertical. I suspect we'll seem carbon nanotube products explode over the next 20 years just as plastics did over the last 40.

The article focuses a bit on whether graphene can replace silicon, which I think kind of misses the point. The material will enable exciting new applications rather than merely transforming existing ones.

I'm also kinda bummed that this kind of research doesn't have a higher profile in the US. This is high-ass-tech and is probably an area in which our oil companies could play a very large role with their competencies at running large, highly complex, raw material production systems.

View on HN

Reading this article brought to mind this scene in The Graduate:

Mr. McGuire: I just want to say one word to you. Just one word.

Benjamin: Yes, sir.

Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?

Benjamin: Yes, I am.

Mr. McGuire: Plastics.

Benjamin: Exactly how do you mean?

So, I'm wondering how and where I should be investing to take advantage of this materials revolution. Seems like a pretty obvious bet to make, but it seems to be spread across many companies and with an indeterminate schedule (some say 5 years, some say 10, some say "we don't know"). And, more importantly, so many of the companies involved are too big for one product or even one line of products to make a huge dent in their bottom line. I've invested in IBM and Intel in the past based on research in the pipeline, and while the products did come to fruition and did prove to be good for the companies bottom line, the stock market didn't respond as much as one would hope (but probably about what I should have expected, had I really done the analysis of how it would effect their bottom line).

I'm not sure I follow you on the oil companies, though. Sure, they've been a major player in the plastics pipeline forever, but, if graphene isn't made from petroleum derivatives, I'm not sure it is a natural fit for oil companies. I would say the folks building LCD panels and other silicon-based products are the obvious candidates for some graphene products (and Samsung seems to be near the front of the pack in products based on graphene)...but maybe it'll be some other segment altogether (solar panel makers like Sharp and Kyocera, perhaps?).

Whatever happens, I want in, at least as an investor. So, I guess next time I review my portfolio (which currently contains GOOG and nothing else) I'm gonna do some more research on graphene. It's probably not a big rush to find the right companies...since it'll be a very long bet, anyway.

Actually, The Graduate was exactly what I was thinking as I was typing my comment. ;)

Edit: didn't reply to the bigger point about oil companies. I kinda threw that out there as a quick thought and agree with you that the semiconductor, semi-co materials, or LCD guys might be better positioned. That said, few companies are as good at gathering, refining, processing and shipping gigatons of carbon as the oil companies.

"That said, few companies are as good at gathering, refining, processing and shipping gigatons of carbon"

That's abstracting too far. The food industry ships around gigatons of carbon too, which is just as "graphenic" as oil, namely, zero. Pencil manufacturers actually use graphene, but it seems unlikely they're going to lead this drive either.

I thought pencil manufacturers actually use graphite. From the article I understand that graphene pencil is only useful to write on steel sheets.

I had been led to believe by previous articles such as [1] that graphite contains graphene, albeit in small quantities and not in a useful state. The process of trying to produce a link to substantiate this has left me less sure whether it "contains" graphene, or if it merely can produce it under the circumstances described in the article. Given what it is and how much carbon gets around on this planet, it is perhaps hard to say what "contains" graphene in the first place, in much the same way I'm often a bit annoyed when someone counts every oxygen and two hydrogens anywhere in a compound as "water", regardless of how tied up they are.

[1]: http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/s_702926...

The bizarre part of the grandparent comment is that there is an industry devoted to the gathering, refining, processing and shipping of gigatons of graphite. It's called the coal industry.

"So, I'm wondering how and where I should be investing to take advantage of this materials revolution."

Find out which schools are doing the most interesting research in this area, and then talk with the tech transfer people at each university. They should be more than happy to hook you up.

We have more important high-tech ventures to fund over here, such as location-based social photo sharing services.

In all seriousness, though, I think we're at a point with graphene comparable to the earliest days of the integrated circuit. We can imagine faster and smaller adding machines, but we can't quite yet imagine an IBM PC running VisiCalc. And the iPhone isn't even science fiction yet.

> I'm also kinda bummed that this kind of research doesn't have a higher profile in the US.

Graphene gets a ton of attention, do not worry. It is one of the most competitive areas of materials science research. When my former gradschool groupmate did his proposal on it and all the experiments he wished to do for his PhD thesis (keep in mind he spent a year putting this proposal together) most of the experiments had already been done by the time his proposal was actually accepted. When I left the program, there was literally a "groundbreaking" paper per a week coming out in Science or Nature, and all the other publications were being flooded.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com