14 DAY TRIAL // Graphene has been lauded as the next end-all, be-all wonder of technological advancement, with pretty much every sort of breakthrough expected to be enabled by it. Now, though, some scientists think they may have found something better.
A team of researchers from Oxford, Stanford and Berkeley universities have developed a material that supposedly has all the great properties of graphene, but instead of 2D sheets, it comes in 3D.
Considering that the 2D nature of graphene is what is preventing bulk manufacturing and even its use in prototypes, that's a bigger deal than it might sound like.
Graphene is a carbon-based material made of sheets of atoms layered in a hexagonal pattern. Sectioning the sheet causes the links between the atoms to fray at the edges, and (due to certain properties we won't get into) cripples the endurance and everything else that graphene has going for it.
Cadmium arsenide is shaped like a 3D crystal, but the electrons act like they have no mass at all, just like in graphene.
It's that peculiarity that renders the materials usable in superconductors, super storage devices, super capacitors, super everything really.
The Diamond Light Source in the United Kingdom and at Berkeley Lab's Advanced Light Source has tested several cadmium arsenide samples so far.
Add to that the fact that the new material is easier to grow and work with, and graphene may be pushed aside as a failed first draft.