World's thinnest light source is 1 atom thick Graphene @ 2500°C

Graphene continues to surprise researchers all over the world with its incredible characteristics. The latest Graphene miracle is all about turning 1 atom thick Graphene layer into a source of light. Researchers working at the Columbia Engineering have created world's thinnest light bulb by attaching very small graphene strips to metallic electrodes suspended above Si substrate. Passage of current through the filaments caused the strips to heat up and emit light. The emitted light was so intense that it could be seen with naked eye - even though it was at atomic scale.

Prof. Wang Fon-Jen from the Mechanical Engineering department of the Columbia Engineering said that the new type of light source can now be integrated into chips to create very thin photonic circuits that are robust yet flexible. There were several approaches to achieve this in the past, however none worked to allow integration of light source on a chip.

The main reason is that in order to emit light, the filaments must be heated to several hundreds of degrees and the micro-scale metallic conductors are not able to withstand such temperatures. At nano sizes the heat transfer is also very efficient, which typically leads to damage of other parts of the nearby circuitry.

Worlds-Thinnest-Atomic-Bulb

The fix comes from Graphene because of its impressive heat withstanding capabilities. The researchers found out that while emitting light, Graphene was withstanding temperatures as high as 2500°C, confined to a hot-spot that emitted light. The hot spot gets created because as Graphene heats up, it becomes a poor conductor of heat. The unique properties of Graphene allow it to be heated up to nearly half the temperature of Sun and improve its efficiency about 1000 times over graphene on a solid substrate.

The team is now working on the performance of their light bulb. The want to find out how rapidly can they turn the light on and off to create 'bits' that can be used for data transfer. Check out the video below that shows the world's thinnest light bulb in action.


Further Reading: Graphene Bulbs, Because LED Bulbs Are So 2015!.

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