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Graphene's electrical and thermal properties have made it one of the most researched materials in electronics. Electrons move through it very quickly, it conducts heat well, and a single layer is thin, flexible and nearly transparent.
What research has shown
Research labs have built graphene transistors that operate at very high frequencies; in 2010 IBM reported a graphene transistor running at 100 GHz. A major obstacle is that graphene has no natural band gap, so it doesn't switch "off" the way silicon does. Researchers are working on ways around this, such as chemical doping, strain and combining graphene with other materials. Graphene-based processors are not a commercial product today.
Where graphene is closer to real products
- Thermal management: graphene films and fillers are used or tested to spread heat in devices, and graphene is studied in thermal pastes and fluids.
- Conductive inks and coatings: for printed circuits, antennas and anti-static or shielding layers.
- Sensors: graphene responds to strain, gases, light and temperature, which suits it to sensitive, low-power sensors.
- Batteries: as a conductive additive in electrodes.
- Flexible and transparent electronics: as a possible alternative to indium tin oxide in touch screens and displays, still mostly in development.
Cooling the electronics in data centers
As AI hardware runs hotter, the coolant that carries heat away matters more. Our ThermaGraph™ coolant for indoor water loops showed a +6% to +18% higher convective heat transfer coefficient than a glycol baseline in internal pumped-loop lab tests. That is lab data, not field data. See ThermaGraph™ data center coolants, and read Graphene coolants for AI data centers: what lab tests show and what they don't.
See also our graphene in electronics project page. Contact us to test graphene in your material.
