Graphene : Discovery And Potential

2. The carbon atom has four electrons in its outer shells, its electrons will readily form a covalent bond, it will readily bond with other carbon atoms, and will also share more than one electron with other atoms are three characteristics of the carbon atom that are important in forming organic compounds.

Carbon has six total electrons; two of the electrons it has are in its first electron shell while the other four are its valence electrons. Due to its four valence electrons, it rarely gains and/or loses electrons and/or form ionic bonds due to the fact it would have to give away or take four other electrons. In order to complete its outer shell, carbons shares its valence electrons with other atoms by having four separate covalent bonds. The carbon atom then becomes the crossing point where each molecule branches off into four separate directions.Carbon’s electron configuration allows it to bond frequently with oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and phosphorus. If the carbon atom forms only a single covalent bond, The electrons form so that its bonds angle towards an imaginary tetrahedron.

In 1779, Carl Wilhelm Scheele showed another allotrope of carbon graphite, which were known as a form of lead in early times. He found out that graphite was almost identical to charcoal except a small admixture of iron, and when it oxidized with nitric acid, it gave out “aerial acid” (carbon dioxide). In 1786, the French scientists Claude Louis Berthollet, Gaspard Monge and Vandermonde confirmed that graphite was mostly carbon by oxidizing with oxygen in the same way

Each carbon atom is covalently bonded (sp2 hybridized) to three other carbon atoms in a hexagonal array, leaving one free electron per each carbon atom. Each hexagon in the graphene sheet exhibits two pi-electrons, which are delocalized allowing for the efficient conduction of electricity. A single layer of graphite is called grapheme. This material displays extraordinary electrical, thermal and physical properties. Graphene is technically a non-metal but is often referred to as a quasi-metal due to its properties being like that of a semiconducting material and allowing it to display high electron mobility at room temperature.

2a) Many characteristics allows carbon to be the base of biological molecules. Due to the four valance electrons carbon can bond with up to four other electrons in covalent bonds. This allows carbon to become the central point for many macromolecules. Carbon is also relatively small in size and is readily available on Earth. Carbon can also bin to other carbon atoms and can make single, double, or triple bonds. Due to this, long strings of carbon atoms can be created with seemingly no limit. The carbon-carbon bonds easily allow similar macromolecules with different functional groups. The shape of carbon-based macromolecules also easily vary. Shapes such as chains, rings, and branches are commonplace. With variance of shape, carbon can be the base for isomers; molecules with the same formula but different structures. Carbon is the only element on the periodic table that uniquely has all these characteristics.

Carbon Atoms are very important in building biological molecules. Carbon has many characteristics that make possible building of a variety of carbon-based biological molecules. Carbon has four valence molecules, is very abundant, and carbon creates very strong covalent bonds. Carbon's four valence electrons allows the molecules to create four different covalent bonds, and it makes it much easier to bond to other molecules. The balanced electrons makes it easy to break bonds and form them, therefore building biological molecules. Carbon is in the top five most abundant elements in the universe, which makes it very important or there wouldn't be so much of it. The amount of carbon creates a variety of carbon-based biological molecules because

In simple terms, graphene, is a thin layer of pure carbon; it is a single, tightly packed layer of carbon atoms that are bonded together in a hexagonal honeycomb lattice. In more complex terms, it is an allotrope of carbon in the structure of a plane of sp2 bonded atoms with a molecule bond length of 0.142 nanometres. Layers of graphene stacked on top of each other form graphite, with an interplanar spacing of 0.335 nanometres.

Graphene is a form of carbon which has recently been receiving a great deal of attention. Some have come to call it “the wonder material” due to its many extraordinary properties. Although isolated in 2004, graphene's properties had been calculated decades earlier. It consists of a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice. A single sheet of graphene is stronger than steel and yet remains very flexible, retaining all of its properties despite being bent and unbent multiple times. It is able to sustain extremely high electric current densities, is impermeable to all gasses, has a thermal conductivity double that of diamond and a very high electron mobility at room temperature. It is also easily chemically functionalized,

Some examples of compounds formed by carbon include diamonds which are pure carbon and are the hardest substance known to man with no known other material that can cut them. Graphite which is also a pure carbon-based molecule can be found in your pencil as lead. The oil in our cars is made of carbon, and the plastic of your keypad is carbon-based. Additionally, Carbon nanotubes which can self assemble and provide not only incredible strength, but also electrical, optical, thermal and kinetic properties like no other materials (The Biochemical Essense of Life: Carbon, n.d.). Another key feature of carbon is that its bonds are strong enough to resist environmental stresses, but weak enough to be manipulated by our bodies with enzymes which is a requirement of any organism’s metabolism (The Biochemical Essense of Life: Carbon, n.d.).

The research on graphene scaffold for wound dressing and cell culture is a relatively new direction that deserves special attention. Enormous studies in this field so far demonstrated that graphene is antibacterial (Akhavan et al, 2010), accelerate the growth (Kalbacova et al, 2010), differentiation (Nayak et al, 2011), and proliferation of mammalian cells (Ryoo et al, 2010), and hence hold great potential in tissue engineering, regenerative medicine and other biomedical fields. Graphene is selected as an effective nanocarrier due to its potential for crossing the plasma membrane and promoting the cellular uptake of pathogen at infected site. Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize for their meticulous work in 2010 “for ground breaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene” as monocrystalline graphitic films (Novoselov et al, 2004, Yang et al, 2008). Graphene has unique hierarchical and physicochemical properties including a high surface area (2630 m2/g), extraordinary electrical and thermal conductivity (mobility: 20,000 cm2V-1 s-1) through the pie electron cloud makes graphene a promising material in conducting composites and quantum electronics (Bolotin et al, 2008, Morozov et al, 2008) and also possess strong mechanical strength (~1100 Gpa (Lu et al,

Graphene is a recently isolated allotrope of carbon, consisting of a single layer of carbon atoms arranged into an inter-connected benzene-ring structure (Figure 1).1 Resembling a hexagonal honeycomb lattice or a chain-link fence in structure, graphene is only one atom thick and is thus considered a two-dimensional material.1 It is currently touted as the thinnest, strongest, lightest, most flexible and best conducting material known to science.2 Although some of this is based on theoretical data (extrapolated from real samples with inevitable intrinsic defects compared to a perfect sample), these notable qualities drive graphene research at a relentless pace and imply applications that could revolutionize computer electronics and future

Graphene is a groundbreaking material to only have just hit the market and is beginning to see wider use. It’s been cited as a miracle material that will bring great change to living conditions

1. The high specific surface area of graphene (both suspended and supported on substrate) provide increased

Carbon is an important element found in all living organisms and also in many non-living organisms. Because there is a finite amount of carbon, and many living and non living matter that requires the element, the carbon goes through the carbon cycle so that it can be used repeatedly. The carbon cycle is the process in which the element carbon, in its many different forms, travels through the atmosphere, biosphere, geosphere and the ocean. This is done through the addition, removal and storage of carbon in these four locations through many processes such as respiration and decomposition of living organisms, burning of fossil fuels, dissolving and photosynthesis. All parts of the carbon cycle, addition, storage and removal, are linked together and are needed to complete the cycle.

In this novel, there appear many characters such as pigs, humans, horses and donkeys and so on. The main character is Napoleon who is a pig, and this plays a villain and implicates Joseph Stalin.