Two Nobel Prize winning scientists out of the U.K. have come up with a new way to use graphene, the thinnest material in the world, that could make Internet pipes feel a lot fatter.
University of Manchester professors Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov, who won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work with graphene, write in the journal Nature Communications of a method of combining the carbon-based material with metallic nanostructures to use as photodetectors that could greatly increase the amount of light optical communications devices could handle. This advance in graphene light harvesting and conversion into electrical power could lead to communications rates tens or even hundreds of times faster than todays, the researchers say.
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Graphene finding could lead to super-fast Internet British scientists have devised a way of using graphene, the thinnest material in the world, to capture and convert more light than previously, paving the way for advances in high-speed Internet and other optical communications.
In a study in the journal Nature Communication, the team — which included last year’s Nobel Prize-winning scientists Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov — found that by combining graphene with metallic nanostructures, there was a 20-fold enhancement in the amount of light the graphene could harvest and convert into electrical power. uk.reuters.com/article/2011/08/30/oukin-uk-graphene-light-idUKTRE77T3B320110830 in.reuters.com/article/2011/08/30/idINIndia-59054220110830