{"id":51361,"date":"2018-03-26T11:30:09","date_gmt":"2018-03-26T15:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/?p=51361"},"modified":"2018-06-26T11:43:44","modified_gmt":"2018-06-26T15:43:44","slug":"monatomic-moment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/2018\/03\/26\/monatomic-moment\/","title":{"rendered":"Monatomic moment"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Research by Elliott Brown, the Ohio Research Scholars Endowed Chair in Sensors Physics, left, and Weidong Zhang, research physicist, helped create expanded applications of graphene in everything from space exploration to all-weather sensors. (Photo by Erin Pence)<\/p><\/div>\n

Researchers at Wright State University have helped pave the way for expanded applications of graphene in everything from space exploration to all-weather sensors.<\/p>\n

The research was conducted by Elliott Brown, the Ohio Research Scholars Endowed Chair in Sensors Physics, and Weidong Zhang, research physicist in the Department of Physics<\/a>. Their work was recently published in Nature Communications, a scientific journal that covers the natural sciences, including physics, chemistry and biology.<\/p>\n

Graphene is the world\u2019s first two-dimensional material having monatomic thickness \u2014 a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal (honeycomb) lattice. Its in-plane mechanical properties make it the strongest material ever tested, yet it is very flexible out-of-plane. It efficiently conducts heat and electrical current and is nearly transparent to visible light.<\/p>\n

Scientists have theorized about graphene for years, but it wasn\u2019t until 2004 that the material was successfully isolated, by exfoliation from graphite crystals \u2014 using Scotch tape. That work by Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov at the University of Manchester resulted in them winning the Nobel Prize in physics in 2010.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat got people excited about graphene was the fact that it offered the potential for higher room-temperature electron and hole mobilities than any known semiconductor,\u201d said Brown. Mobility is a way of characterizing the acceleration of free-charge carriers and is an important metric for materials used in solid-state electronics of all sorts.<\/p>\n

Monatomic graphene films on silicon substrates were supplied to Wright State by collaborators at the University of California-Irvine. Brown and Zhang then made precise electromagnetic measurements at THz frequencies using their unique instrumentation. They then realized that the data could be well explained using a common method in electrical engineering called microwave transmission line modeling.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe figured out how to adapt the transmission-line model \u2014 to describe the interaction of electromagnetic radiation with graphene as a two-dimensional material,\u201d said Brown. \u201cThis research will help move graphene from the physics arena into an engineering-applications regime. It means that electrical engineers working in industry or in research labs will know better how to analyze the graphene in high-frequency circuitry and how it interacts with radiation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown says this could lead the way to technology advances in such applications as the beam steering in high-resolution navigational radar systems through smoke and fog as well as millimeter-wave and THz imaging systems of concealed objects through clothing and plastic containers.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of work has gone into studying these applications of graphene, but better engineering is required for their success,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wright State physicists helped pave the way for expanded applications of graphene in everything from space exploration to all-weather sensors. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":51365,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[722,2023,725,715,2065,18,746],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academics","category-faculty","category-home-news-sidebar","category-news","category-physics","category-research","category-science-mathematics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51361"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51361\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51370,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51361\/revisions\/51370"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}