14 DAY TRIAL // No doubt consumers are mostly concerned with the latest and greatest development on the CPU, graphics, memory and storage fronts. As such, it’s likely they aren't exactly up to speed with all the research projects meant to enable next-generation technologies. Nevertheless, there are certain projects deserving special mention, and those related to graphene are definitely among them.
For one, graphene is already being considered as a basis for new kinds of CPUs and supposedly has the potential to spawn chips working at 100 terahertz. An encouraging prospect, to be sure, and one that does not make up the entirety of graphene's possible applications.
Apparently, South Korean scientists have come up with a working method of building a touchscreen out of graphene sheets. People from the Sungkyunkwan University have actually synthesized a 30-inch graphene sheet based on the 10 centimeter film they had previously demonstrated. They then somehow created a working touchscreen prototype.
One would likely be inclined to think that, being in its early stages, the technology would not exactly be able to spawn anything overly outstanding. The South Korean team apparently proved this assumption wrong.
The touchscreen utilizes a modified version of the chemical vapor disposition technique (CVD) that grows the graphene on top of the copper foil. This enabled the making of a four-ply stack with a transparency of 90 percent. Not only that, but the panel was even more durable and resistant than what currently used technologies can allow.
Of course, seeing a graphene-based touch panel on the market any time soon is highly unlikely, but if the research dealing with graphene transistors proceeds at the same pace, hardware makers may not need to worry about the difficulties associated with Moore's Law for much longer. It remains to be seen just what the researchers can come up with in the next few years.