The First Graphene bulb a.k.a World's thinnest Light bulb!

Graphene scientists are really keen in making use of Graphene in unexpected fields and, above all wonders, Graphene allows them to do  it!

An international team of researchers drawn from Columbia University, Seoul National University, and the Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science have for the first time ever accomplished another one: a graphene light bulb which has the thickness of one graphene sheet (one carbon atom)!

Why not Possible?

Before that we must know how every bulb works. Its by heating up the element, whether its led or tungsten. When the are hot enough, they emit the light rays.

But, Graphene is so different from them in the fact that it is a good conductor of heat and electricity. So, it can't really get hot enough.

How it works?

However Graphene has a different property by which its thermal conductivity decreases greatly as the temperature exceeds a certain level. So, as the thermal conductivity of graphene starts to drop precipitously, it becomes possible to heat the material beyond those previous limits and to the point where it's manifested as visible light. The researchers have used this property(with lots of science behind it) called Umklapp scattering and made the first ever graphene bulb.

Also, the graphenes use silicon substrate which aids heat dissipation. The paper solves this problem by freely suspending graphenes with reflective substrate below. By tuning their relationship it will be able to produce different colours. This can have a really useful application is customer-aimed products!

How practical is this? For one thing, it should allow for much smaller scales of visible light emitters in electronics. As conventional light bulb-style filaments scale further and further down, they hit a fundamental limit—with that much thermal energy and that small of a conduit, the filament will just burn up. Graphene, not so much. “This new type of ‘broadband’ light emitter can be integrated into chips and will pave the way towards the realization of atomically thin, flexible, and transparent displays, and graphene-based on-chip optical communications,” Hone, a Columbia engineering professor and co-author of a new study , notes in a statement.

But, the problem is with producing suspended Graphenes. So, this product will be at your house soon but do leave a slot for them!