Graphene, a material hailed by industry insiders as ushering in a new era of materials for the 21st century and poised to bring about substantial changes to the world, became one of the key topics of discussion among experts at the 2013 Plastics New Materials, New Technologies, and New Achievements Exchange Conference and the Annual Meeting of the Expert Committee of the China Plastics Industry Association, held in Qingdao at the end of October.
According to experts, graphene possesses several excellent properties: 1. Extremely high conductivity: Graphene is a semiconductor with a zero band gap, allowing electrons to move at speeds up to 1/300th the speed of light, far exceeding the speeds of other metallic conductors or semiconductors. At room temperature, it has the highest carrier mobility while its resistivity is only about 10⁻⁶ Ω·cm, lower than copper (currently the preferred raw material for wire and cable conductors in China) or silver, making it the material with the lowest resistivity in the world. 2. Ultra-large specific surface area: Due to its single-layer two-dimensional structure, graphene possesses an extremely large specific surface area. The ideal specific surface area of single-layer graphene is as high as 2630 m²/g, far exceeding the 1500 m²/g of ordinary activated carbon, giving graphene enormous potential for applications in energy storage materials. 3. High thermal conductivity: Graphene has outstanding thermal conductivity, exceeding that of carbon nanotubes and diamond. The thermal conductivity of single-layer graphene at room temperature can reach 5300 W/(mK), five times that of diamond. 4. Ultra-high strength: Graphene is the strongest material discovered to date, while also possessing excellent toughness and flexibility. With a Young's modulus of 1060 GPa, it is the strongest material available today, 100 times stronger than the best steel and harder than diamond. It can be used to fabricate ultra-strong films and has the potential to create "space elevators." 5. High light transmittance: Almost completely transparent, single-layer graphene has remarkably high transparency, absorbing only about 2.3% of visible light.
Experts point out that graphene's unique structure makes it the hardest and thinnest material in the world, while also possessing strong toughness, electrical conductivity, and thermal conductivity. Due to these numerous properties, graphene has enormous potential for development and can be applied in many fields such as electronics, aerospace, optics, energy storage, biomedicine, and daily life.
It is understood that graphene has attracted attention from the wire and cable industry because of its excellent conductivity and other characteristics. If it is applied to cable conductors, it can increase the conductivity of the same conductor. Some domestic companies have already conducted research on the application of graphene in cable conductors.
