Molécules miracles pour écrans tactiles

Graphene inks bring flexible touch screens step closer - FT.com
▻http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/b1eb43aa-dd99-11e2-892b-00144feab7de.html (#paywall) #écrans

Flexible computer or mobile phone screens have moved a step closer after two British companies began selling inks based on #graphene, the super-thin, super-strong material first isolated a decade ago.

Haydale, a Swansea University spinout that makes graphene in commercial quantities, has developed the ink with Gwent Electronic Materials, a supplier of inks and pastes for electronic instruments and sensors.

They said the graphene inks could enable the commercialisation of flexible displays and touch screens, “smart” packaging, thin photovoltaics and transparent electrodes.

Ray Gibbs, commercial director of Haydale, said: “Graphene has been described as a ‘zero billion dollar market’, mainly because many of the applications that have been discussed are dependent on production technologies that are yet to be developed commercially. The immediate use of [our] materials . . . allows many of the key applications to be realised in the near term.” He said it was a “significant milestone”.

Researchers have yet to discover a method of stretching graphene – a one-atom-thick layer of carbon 100 times stronger than steel but more conductive than carbon – across a surface. The tiny graphene platelets dispersed in the ink could be sprayed or printed on to form a large area with graphene-like qualities.

Volvo, the Swedish vehicle maker, said graphene could be used in engine components, batteries, cooling fluids, electric motors, energy storage and exhausts.

Nokia, the Finnish smartphone manufacturer, said it hoped it could replace #indium tin oxide in touchscreens, as it was in limited supply, brittle and rising in price.

Aircraft makers such as BAE Systems and Spirit are also researching how to use graphene to make aircraft lighter.

Voir aussi : ►http://seenthis.net/messages/33187

Your Smartphone’s Dirty, Radioactive Secret | Mother Jones
►http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2012/11/rare-earth-elements-iphone-malaysia?page=1

Workers then boil off the liquid and separate out the rare earths from rock and radioactive elements. This is where things get dangerous: Companies must take precautions so that workers aren’t exposed to radiation. If the tailings ponds where the radioactive elements are permanently stored are improperly lined, they can leach into the groundwater. If they are not covered properly, the slurry could dry and escape as dust. And this radioactive waste must be stored for an incomprehensibly long time—the half-life of thorium is about 14 billion years, and uranium’s is up to 4.5 billion years. Reminder: Earth itself is 4.5 billion years old.

Not coincidentally, the refining tends to happen in areas where weak environmental rules mean that companies can process the elements on the cheap. Take the Baotou region of Inner Mongolia, where most of China’s rare-earth mines are clustered, and where waste has leached into waterways and irrigation canals, according to several independent investigations. Communities around one former mine in Mongolia blame at least 66 cancer deaths on leaked radioactive waste, and local people complain that their hair and teeth have fallen out.

http://www.motherjones.com/files/images/earths_hybrid_630.gif https://www.motherjones.com/files/earths_iphone_630.gif

#terres_rares #technologie #radioactivité #santé #cancer #travail