Graphene.
 

A super-strong, super-thin carbon...?

Its tremendous strength could produce new composite materials that are super-strong and lightweight, for use in building airplanes, cars and satellites, the committee says.

Michael Strano, a chemist at MIT, said trying to predict its uses would be "folly ... We can't even imagine the uses we're going to find."

I don't want to engage in any folly, but now my current frame might last for another year or two...

I'm gonna go start the "carbon fiber is real" club. Can anyone recommend a word that rhymes with fiber and gives the same effect as "real?"

Cyber. Scriber. Giber. ???

Tighter?

I hate my bike.

"You better believe that I achieve with that carbon fiber weave."


Edit: wow, it sounded much cooler in my head.

Graphene is the new Unobtainium.

I knew this whole carbon fiber thing wouldn't last.

Now CF gets to be retro, vintage ... dare I say the choice of Luddites?

Now we all get to use those see-through phones the movies all tout around.

Cost prohibitive, will never come to fruition. This graphene dream has been around since 2000 or so, just like economically viable self assembled nano structures. Pure fantasy.

+1

Even if this technology makes it to bikes, it's not going to be for a very, very long time.

Graphene has been available for a while now in raw thick sheets -- they use it in automotive racing for splitters because it can take a beating and is fairly cheap. It's not as strong as carbon fiber currently in commercially available sheet form, but it's also much cheaper than carbon fiber.

I imagine this is the same tech applied at a nano level.

Graphene will probably find it's initial use as support weave around carbon frame stress points. That kind of use is not gonna be prohibitively expensive and since it's a compound of carbon, bonding won't be an issue, provided a competent epoxy is found.

That line needs to be in the "Performance" music video. :D

You'll hear about guys with extra sheets of carbon in their garage to repair their frames. Maybe even tourers and randonneurs, they'll have some carbon patches and epoxy in their kit next to the tubeless sealant and Kevlar spoke replacements. ;)

I believe what started the new talk about this was the fact that there was a Nobel prize given this week for it's discovery (in 2003 IIRC). To say that it has no use because it is economically un-feasible is to ignore every technological innovation since the beginning of time.

From the brief description I heard about it there seems to be a lot of uses that could be easily developed for it given that the technology to produce it progresses like all other technologies similar to this have.

Also - worth noting - while I am not in the field, and do not possess specific knowledge about the different advances going on at this time I did get the impression that this is an entirely different application than nano-tubes or nano-structures. This is a sheet that is supposedly 1 atom thick. The electrical conductivity and it's transparency would naturally lend it to use in electrical components more so that carbon structural units at this point.

Bicycles if they were to be made of this would most likely have to continue to be made up of layers of sheets of this - not unlike our current fiber weaving processes. Instead of sheets of woven fibers it would be sheets of atoms layering it in the mold.

My $0.02

Yes, your hair looks great, dude.

Not too long ago Titanium was Unobtanium, and a molded Carbon Fiber bike weighing less than 1 kg wasn't even in anybody's wildist dreams.

Simply extrapolating the future linearly from the past rarely works.

It will be graphene, or nano tubes, or something we've yet to hear of, but CF is not the end of the line in bicycles.

So do I.


But I love mine!:)

Cycling doesn't even get the better carbon fiber at this point; graphene bikes are decades away at best.

^ I think the UCI actually has a role in that time table.

If they lower the weight limit, I think you'd see better funded teams pushing for higher end carbon fiber ala Formula One.

But with the current UCI weight limit, there's not huge incentive for the pros to push for more expensive CF, or more exotic stuff.

I don't think the Graphene is nearly as cool as when he levitates a frog.


can you build a frame from levitate frogs?

Graphene. Why didn't I think of that? I have been building frames using marshmallows and tin foil with only limited success.

I always thought graphene was the distant cousin of the nectarine (which also does not work well as a frame material btw)

What I find funny about graphene is that it was thought to be unstable at ambient conditions. People spent millions of dollars trying extremely complex ways to create it, all which failed. The final method to create it was to take a piece of scotch tape, put it on a piece of graphite, then pull it off.

Granted you can't just take a piece of pencil lead and do that, but it is kind of funny how such a simple method created something so unique.

Now for how it applies to bikes: Pretty much not at all. Considering it is only a single "sheet" of graphite (look at graphites structure if you don't know what I'm talking about) I can't really see a good way to make it useful as a structural material. It's main novel property is that it has extremely good electron mobility in 2 dimensions. In fact, most, if not all conducting polymers are based on the graphene structure in some way. It might eventually replace silicon for transitors, which could result in faster computers. Also, because it is transparent it could find uses in screens, light panels, and solar cells.

But then again, what do I know.