I'm as much a fan of the potential of graphene as anyone. I love the idea of graphene superconductors, etc.
However, to me, casting what you refer to as a "cynical" glance is actually being a realist. There's nothing wrong with cheering on research innovation while also chastising the ability to actually productize that research. So much can be promised in an academic paper that fails upon meeting reality.
In fact, I would venture to say that 90%+ of all academic research fails to materialize in any form into industrial applications.
So is it cynical to ask the question "will we ever see the light of day for this technology in a way that consumers will be actually able to use"? Sounds like a rational and realistic response.
It's probably unrealistic to say "just wait 20-30 more years and maybe you'll see a first application for this technology." Who has the interest or patience for that? Might as well read science fiction if you want to read about technology you'll never actually get your hands on.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with pragramtism and realism. But I'm all for research and academic development. Keep on researching, and maybe one day, some day, we'll see some benefit there. Until then, Graphene will remain the lore of technology potential, but not technology accessible.
Sure not everything works out, but breathless breakthroughs of 20+ years ago directly translated into what seems like minor improvements today. The only things that seems disappointing is we are comparing them to yesterday’s tech not what was current back when this stuff was first discovered in a lab.
But there's a difference between the steady, ongoing improvements that follow from continued iteration and improvement and the whole "Groundbreaking, revolutionary technology that will change everything but is always decades away".
The fatigue doesn't come from the obvious incremental improvements, but those earth-shattering ones that always promise to be just around the corner but end up unattainable. From fusion reactors to flying cars, graphene-powered supercapacitors to 50%+ efficiency solar energy cells, and even, dare I say it, truly level 5 autonomous vehicles, these things are always just here, but fail to materialize.
No one is doubting the progress of technology. The problem is the science fiction-like promotion of technologies that fail to see any commercialization.
Take say Helium filled HDD, that’s not simply an obvious outcome of taking 1960’s HDD technology and scaling things down. It’s very different technology that just happens to be in the same form factor so people assume it’s just all just tiny linear improvements.
In fact, the necessity to use Helium in the first place is a result of all the steady, incremental improvements bringing us to a point where the use of helium could actually provide value.
A revolutionary, ground-breaking innovation would be to use Helium as the storage medium. An incremental innovation is to use helium to improve the storage approaches we're already using.
This is not at all the same sort of breathless hype as "graphene solves everything" but not a single commercial application that proves that it does. So, will ultra-high-density harddrives really be made with graphene in any scalable, commercializable way? Given all the other touted applications of graphene that have failed to materialize, unfortunately it seems that this is something that will need to be proven in a short amount of time (not 20 years) for those of us who have heard it all with regards to graphene to put any weight behind the claim in this article.
It’s not that helium or graphene alone instantly on their own get 10x improvements while everything else stays the same. Instead it’s about eventually hitting new limits but being at 10x capacity when that happens.
The reasons why people are skeptical about graphene are many claims like this. Graphene has yet to show the ability to provide the benefits of the claims expressed in laboratory environments for many of the reasons other non-commercializable technology (such as flying cars) failed to materialize.
Maybe one day Graphene will live up to its claims, but the past almost 2 decades is showing that so far, it is good at generating sensational news, but not much else. Maybe we'll be wrong this time around. But it won't be graphene in this case that's the star of the show, it's HAMR. So, no the article, is not literally about "graphene stores ten times more data".
This is the sort of continuous problem with graphene. Graphene can enable something revolutionary if only this was also done, or if this approach works, or if this or if that.
But again, you’re sidestepping the point if in 20 years graphene is necessary for drives that are 10x current capacity and fit in existing enclosures by your definition it’s not revolutionary as long as the increased capacity showed up a little bit at a time and the transition point wasn’t obvious.
If you can't cope with the time it takes to develop technology, then perhaps don't read technology news?
By comparison, William Shockley filed his patent in June 1948, and Texas Instruments started making transistors for portable radios in 1954. Different technologies move at different rates. Perhaps graphene needs the modern-day equivalent of a Fairchild Semiconductor.
Also, the difficulty of "figuring out affordable, high quality, bulk production methods" of a technology has little to do with the serendipity of its discovery.
Perhaps we just haven't had a "Shockley moment" in graphene yet. It would be nice if these other people stopped getting so much press, though.
"Sadly, Lilienfeld does not appear to have ever built a working prototype of his device; indeed, there’s no evidence that he ever even tried. He also never published any of his work other than as patent applications, so the world would remain ignorant of his insights for another two decades, when Bell Labs started working on what would become the transistor. "
While Lilienfeld had probably given some inspiration or ideas to Shockley, it took actual implementation before it could be turned into product reality. So no, it wasn't 20 years between invention and application. Rather it took 20 years before someone actually put that theory into practical use. And once it was turned into practical use, industry commercialization followed rapidly. It didn't take 20 years after the Bell Labs' implementation for first applications to work.
So it's worth asking what is different here. If people are building prototypes and small scale implementations, what is truly getting in the way of commercialization?
[0] https://hackaday.com/2018/12/11/julius-lilienfeld-and-the-fi...
Figuring out how to bulk manufacture something is often just as hard as the initial discovery. There are a ton of technologies that are in the literature but can’t be purchased because they are too hard to manufacture.
Every 6 months there is a new use of graphene that promises 10x something, new cancer treatment that is revolutionary, new AI that can solve the worlds hardest problems ...
But at the same time, this is Hacker News, not Mature Consumer Product News. Here is the best place to discuss what tech in 2030 might look like, not what we can buy today.
Also google assistant is pretty nuts if you step back and think a out it. Ai has been doing pretty alright as well. IDK what exactly your expectations are for revolutionary treatments and powerful AIs but what we have already is pretty insane.
My consolation is that there are lots of other flying car projects now. Moller might be bad at taking stuff to production but also he was probably too early.
I believe the poster is jesting at the whole marking of it and let's be fair, it has been marketed as the next big thing and how it will solve so many things very soon; Many new science articles of how they did this and that and yet nothing.
Now, whilst I can appreciate that from lab to industrial production is a very long bumpy process and can often be longer than it took to do the many year lab work. That whole aspect is almost always overlooked in the marketing (news release) rewrites that filter down into Joe public news feeds. That I appreciate and get.
So for me the real issue is not cynicism slants, it's the way news media takes such science and run with it to the stage that they build such expectations.
Though we have been here before - remember flying cars and the public mindset in the 60's-80's era or indeed robots circa the World fair and how they would be in everybody's homes.
Oh and I'm extremely mindful that to do some science you need funding and with that, you often have to up-sell what your doing to be able to do that science in the first place.
Which is why I don't default view such cynicism as 100% down to the individual, when they are a product of so many links in the news/science chain and I'm just aware of that whole news production line from scientists after some money to do some science, to those that fund it wanting a ROI on their investment, down to institutions making carefully worded news release statements that will not say how or when, just push you into how this `could` or `will`(without specifying a year) do X,Y or Z better; And on paper they are right. But then the whole reality from lab to your home is a very long bumpy road and not everything is cost effective or that clear cut. Which explains your flying cars phase and kitchen robots phase of decades past.
Apparently we can now make tapes of REBCO, which is a high temperature superconductor. The primary intended application is fusion research? Why wouldn't this be broadly useful?
Hopefully as supply chains are established and economies of scale kick in for HTS the price will go down.