In 2004, researchers discovered a super thin material that is at least a 100 times stronger than steel and the best known conductor of heat and electricity.
This means that the material, graphene, could bring faster electronics than is possible today with silicon.
But to truly be useful, graphene would need to carry an electric current that switches on and off, like what silicon does in the form of billions of transistors on a computer chip. This switching creates strings of 0s and 1s that a computer uses for processing information.
Purdue University researchers, in collaboration with the University of Michigan and the Huazhong University of Science and Technology, show how a laser technique could permanently stress graphene into having a structure that allows the flow of electric current.
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