One-molecule-thick material has big advantages | Hacker News Reader

One-molecule-thick material has big advantages

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33 pointsmaxko8712 comments

I'm starting to grow a little bit numb toward all the revolutionary materials science papers that I've seen since starting grad school. I don't mean to malign the work done here, but if I had a dollar for every paper I've read that claimed to be the foundation for a new class of devices I'd be rich enough to start my own seed fund.

When will we see some actual commercialization of this nano tech? The nano future has been five years away for the last 20 years. Let's make some devices already.

What is the path for this research to be developed into new products, and can new businesses be built around this technology? When can we start hacking with these materials outside labs in garages to disrupt the big materials companies? I these questions are the ones HN readers want answered.

"Let's make some devices already."

That's genius. We need to relay this idea to the science people. Is there a mailing list?

Oh! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nanotechnology_applicat... , Nevermind! :P

Chips with small feature sizes and paints with nanoparticles in them are not really what was originally meant by "nanotechnology". We still do not have the capability to design and build arbitrary machinery using individual molecules as building materials. In the meantime, the word "nanotechnology" got appropriated to refer to anything that involved small feature sizes and needed funding grants, so Drexler started calling it "molecular manufacturing"...

I've seen "revolutionary technology" articles for the last 15 years. Some of the stuff does eventually trickle in. Most of it seems to influences and tweak existing manufacturing.

I think the problem is three fold: First, it is a really hard engineering problem to get from a logic gate on an atom thick sheet to something actually useful. Second, manufacturing processes are all tailored around the exists ting, so even if they figure out the material, they still have to build supply chains, which is really expensive. Third, they are dealing with incremental evolution of the existing technology along the way, which reduces the massive benefits seen when the technology first came out of the lab.

But I agree. More science fiction in real life, please. :)

This may be a stupid question but can you even see something that is just one molecule thick? Is it mostly transparent?

Indeed, from the fourth to last paragraph: "The material is so thin that it’s completely transparent"

The short answer is "it depends, but it's most likely transparent." In this case, yes - it's transparent. In theory, it depends on a number of factors.

according to the actual report http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nl302015v Two-dimensional (2D) materials, such as molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), have been shown to exhibit excellent electrical and optical properties.

While I have no specialization in the area, I gather that the scientist are suggesting it may be useful as a sort of screen technology, from the article

"For example, MoS2 could be applied to glass, producing displays built into a pair of eyeglasses or the window of a house or office."

Very exciting stuff.

So, it's widely produced as a lubricant already, but how would supply hold up if the market for the material hugely expands? One of the really nice things about the potential for graphene electronics is that you can be darn sure we'll never run out of carbon. Molybdenum, on the other hand, isn't exactly the most common metal in the world. Our electronics already depend on traces rare elements, but not as primary structural components.

So, even if we can make chips out of this stuff, will they actually be economically viable, and for how long?

I wonder what the likelihood is of this being a solution for Augmented Reality contact lenses. The article mentions the possibility of it being used to build displays for eyeglasses, but that depends on a number of factors like pixel density that I can never tell whether reporters take into account.

That it might be useful for displays at all is mere speculation at this point. Meaningful conjecture on the characteristics of those displays is beyond the scientists doing the research themselves; don't get your hopes up for the reporters doing any better.

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