Terrifying news, kids: we're growing seriously close to maxing out the density limits of present magnetic memory technology as it becomes increasingly difficult to shrink the necessary grains used in the process. Thankfully, there's a team of German scientists devoted to doing more than standing around and watching the inevitable happen. Cobalt, the element responsible for keeping your precious data intact, typically requires a 50,000 atom fleet for each grain, but boffins from Dresden have found a way to shrink that to a measly flotilla of 50. Without trampling you with technological details, attaching carbon rings to the cobalt reproduces the requisite hexagonal close packed structure, which leads to reduced space requirements. Should this technique prove viable, we can expect yet another race among hard drive makers as they strive to make each other's most capacious drives look downright diminutive. Hit the read link for all the grisly details.

[Via Graphene-Info]

8GHz (with the help of liquid nitrogen) not quick enough? Leave it to the folks at MIT to make sure your zaniest desires are well taken care of. As research forges ahead on graphene, carbon nanotubes and buckyballs (remember those?), gurus at the university have discovered a breakthrough that could eventually lead to microchips that make existing silicon-based CPUs weep. In fact, the research could lead to practical systems in the 500 to 1,000 gigahertz range. The magic all ties back to advancements on a graphene chip known as a frequency multiplier, and while the nitty-gritty of all this is far too complicated for the layperson to grasp, all you really need to know is this: finally, you can rest assured that you'll one day own a chip capable of handling Duke Nukem Forever.

[Via InformationWeek]

Graphene-based gadgets are coming, we just know it. Trouble is, we're still a long, long ways away. That said, a team of South Korean scientists are bringing us ever closer to bendable, durable gizmos by creating a graphene film with a diameter of 10 centimeters by "adopting a conventional chemical vapor deposition (CVD) technique." Furthermore, the crew's development of what's being called the "world's first circuit patterning technology for the graphene film has the potential to replace silicon-based semiconductors." If this is just way too heavy for your mind to digest on a Friday, here's the skinny: the newfangled manufacturing process has, for all intents and purposes, overcome the limitations of graphene, which could not be made large enough for commercial applications in the past.

[Image courtesy of ScienceFriday, thanks Agustin]

As we've seen, plenty of researchers and companies are betting on graphene as being the big thing that will revolutionize transistors and, hence, all manner of electronics, and it looks like IBM is now claiming one of the biggest breakthroughs to date, not to mention the desirable title of "world's fastest graphene transistor." More specifically, IBM researchers have apparently been the first to demonstrate the operation of graphene field-effect transistors at gigahertz frequencies and, apparently even more importantly, they've also established the scaling behavior of the graphene transistors, which they say could eventually lead to the development of terahertz graphene transistors -- or, in other word's, keep Moore's Law around for quite a bit longer than many expected.

We're pretty certain the world's big enough for the both of 'em, but a graphene-polymer hybrid developed by a brilliant team from Northwestern University could prove to be a suitable -- and much cheaper -- alternative to polymer-infused carbon nanotubes. Put simply, graphite can be purchased for dollars per pound, while single-walled nanotubes are hundreds of dollars per gram. A breakthrough has found that tough, lightweight materials can be created by "spreading a small amount of graphene, a single-layer flat sheet of carbon atoms, throughout polymers," and these composites could eventually be used to make lighter car and airplane parts (among other things). We won't kid you, there's a lot of technobabble in the read link below, but it's well worth the read if your inner nerd is up for it.

We've heard researchers tout the many benefits of graphene before, and it doesn't look like they're showing any signs of letting up, with a group from the University of Manchester now boasting that they've made even more progress with the material that was created only a few years ago. Specifically, they've apparently found a way to develop graphene-based films (an alternative to the current indium-based options) more cheaply by simply "dissolving" chunks of graphite into graphene and then "spraying the suspension onto a glass surface." What's more, the researchers say that there are only a "few small, incremental steps" remaining before the graphene film is ready for the mass production stage, after which they say we could be seeing graphene-based LCD products within "a few years." As you may recall, this all follows some similar developments from researchers at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, although their method apparently "involved several extra steps," and they weren't making any promises about actual products turning up anytime soon.

Not to sound alarming or anything, but apparently, we've only got a decade or so before our planet runs clean out of indium. Thankfully for us, a team of researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Germany are purportedly onto a replacement. For those in the dark, indium is a critical resource in "creating solar cells, LCD and other devices which must have transparent electrodes to carry out their function," but the aforementioned crew has seemingly been able to take graphene ("single layer 2D sheets extracted from the common material graphite") and build an acceptable alternative. The creation is 80-percent transparent to visible light and 100-percent transparent to infrared light, which could actually lead to solar cells capable of soaking up even more energy from more of the EM spectrum. 'Course, there's no telling how close this discovery is to being commercially viable, but we suppose we could always resurrect RPTVs and rely solely on wind farms for renewable energy if necessary, right?

[Via DailyTech, image courtesy of About]

Researchers at Princeton have developed a way to put transistors on a carbon substrate called graphene they say could one day replace silicon -- and lead to circuits 10 times faster than today's. Professor Stephen Chou and graduate student Xiaogan Liang are behind the research, which involves patching together tiny, 100-micrometer sections graphene together to form sheets large enough to print circuits on. Chou and Liang say the tech could immediately benefit wireless devices, resulting in lower power consumption and stronger signals in smaller devices. Optimistic estimates still have production-grade applications a couple years out, however -- looks like we're stuck with our ridiculously high-powered silicon until then.