In a new study, the team reports that extremely sharp bends changed graphene’s local electrical potential in ways that closely matched atomic-scale theoretical calculations.
The researchers add they’ve now seen flexoelectricity in graphene, meaning uneven bending creates a separation of electrical charge. In one-atom-thick graphene, however, the researchers argue that the extreme bend does something more unusual. It changes how electron orbitals overlap, redistributing electrons around the wrinkle.
That makes this a case of what the researchers call quantum orbital flexoelectricity.
the way I read it, it means smaller transistors. Considering how silicon is reaching its miniaturization limit, it could mean graphene could be used to allow smaller transistors.
If they could mass produce this, which I significantly doubt.
Yeah, I think they're trying to say that the wrinkle caused by the graphene is opening up orbital space for the atoms. So instead of them all being in a neat little line and overlapping each other, they are spread out a little bit more around the bend of the wrinkle in the graphene thus giving more space to the orbiting electrons of the atom.
What benefit it there to giving more space to the to the orbiting electrons? Do they move more efficiently? How does this impact the overall microchip’s capability?
By bending the graphene strands this way, we open up the potential for highly efficient energy transfer with minimal heat generation. Think transformers that never get warm or motors that can run at high velocities without heating up.
This will allow the practical use of static and piezoelectric inputs to drive things like cell phones or even the ability to finally harness lightning within super-capacitors at scale.
At least, I think that’s what it means, I could be wrong. I’m not sure, I studied art history.
Snooped around and got it.. I think. The bend was so small and sharp that individual atoms encrouch each other's electron cloud. Because of this there is a sharp bend where the electron clouds interfere with each other and now the electrons like parts of this combined cloud more than the other. So rather than a neutral, balanced or symmetrical distribution, they are more likely to be at certain spots that the other. So it creates a charged area, a net dipole, because of which there is a potential difference that can be measured between the spots that have higher vs lower probabiloty of electrons existing. (Electrons have probabilstic distrubution in their orbitals, not real locations we can catch them at)
Are we anywhere near being able to replicate this process on mass production scale though?
Folks seem to be thinking this process can make it possible to create much smaller circuits, but I’m not aware of any automated facility/tooling even being close to capable of this on a large scale. Wouldn’t creating a process like that be an even larger technological leap than the discovery/experiment itself?
Don’t get me wrong, this is super cool. Just not sure it will have any practical applications in the near future.
Polarity comes from somewhere, and scientists might have actually done what napkin math says should happen. Our imaginations matched the expectation of reality related to modeling this extreme physics. This sounds like the step before greatness, the least applicable yet closest to real-world application kind of discovery. Cue the gray confetti and the deadpan cheering.
But seriously, if these kinds of bends could be made into something like corrugated cardboard the material would be one of the top materials in its class. Now it's one step closer out of the lab, if only anybody knew what to do with it.
Short version: bend a one-atom-thick sheet of carbon sharply enough and it spontaneously develops a plus side and a minus side, purely from the shape.
The idea was predicted in 2008 — that a sharp enough bend would push electrons out of balance and produce electrical polarization from geometry alone. Nobody could confirm it, because the bend happens over distances close to the size of individual atoms, where microscopes struggle to measure curvature.
I'm assuming this could be used to "attach" certain points if you bring together two of these structures? Or what would this effect be useful for, and how could the structure be maintained?!
What a sloppy article and conclusion, here GPTs ELI10: ELI5: Graphene is basically a sheet of carbon that’s only one atom thick, arranged like microscopic chicken wire.
Normally it’s pretty flat, and its electrons are distributed fairly evenly above and below the sheet.
What these researchers found is that if you put an insanely sharp wrinkle in graphene — we’re talking a bend only a few atoms across — something weird happens to the electrons.
Think of the electrons as fuzzy clouds around the carbon atoms. When the graphene is flat, those clouds are symmetrical. But bend the sheet hard enough and those electron clouds get distorted. More electronic charge shifts toward one side of the bend and away from the other.
So the wrinkle basically develops a tiny: negative side ↔ positive side
That effect is called flexoelectricity: uneven bending of a material causes electrical polarization.
And the really interesting part is that the effect gets extremely strong when the bend becomes atomically sharp.
This doesn’t mean you’ve made a tiny free-energy generator. The total wrinkle is absurdly small. It means the electrical effect per unit area is huge.
The researchers also found that the wrinkle changes graphene’s local electrical potential. So, very roughly, an electron traveling through the sheet sees something like:
flat graphene → electrical speed bump → flat graphene.
That’s potentially a big deal because normally, if engineers want one part of a material to behave electrically differently from another part, they change its chemistry, add different atoms, layer different materials together, etc.
This research suggests another possibility: Don’t change what the material is made of. Change its shape.
So someday you could imagine one continuous sheet of graphene where engineers deliberately create microscopic folds:
flat → wrinkle → flat → wrinkle → flat
and those wrinkles act as electrical barriers, junctions, sensors, or other functional parts of a device.
Basically electronic origami.
Some possible applications:
• Ridiculously sensitive pressure sensors. Tiny pressure changes the wrinkle’s curvature, which changes its electrical signal.
• Vibration/motion sensors. Mechanical movement could be converted into an electrical signal at extremely small scales.
• Flexible electronics. Since graphene is only one atom thick, this could potentially be useful in flexible displays, electronic skin, wearable sensors, medical patches, etc.
• Chemical/biological sensors. If a molecule landing on the graphene slightly changes the wrinkle or its electronic environment, that change might be electrically detectable.
• Nanoelectromechanical machines. Tiny moving components could mechanically deform graphene and have that deformation directly read out electrically.
• Electronics made by geometry. Instead of doping a semiconductor differently in different places, engineers might eventually create some electrical structures simply by controlling where graphene is flat versus sharply curved.
• Stacks of 2D materials. Graphene can be layered with other atomically thin materials, and engineered wrinkles might let researchers create completely new kinds of tiny electronic junctions.
There is one important caveat: This doesn’t suddenly make graphene a replacement for silicon CPUs.
Graphene still lacks the convenient semiconductor band gap that lets silicon transistors switch cleanly between ON and OFF. The wrinkles change graphene’s local electronic potential, but they don’t magically solve every graphene-transistor problem.
Also, most of those applications are still possible future applications, not products these scientists built.
The deeper scientific point is arguably cooler anyway.
At human scales we tend to think: shape = mechanical property
and electricity = electronic property
But once something is only an atom thick, those two things stop being independent.
Change the shape
→ change where the atoms sit
→ change how their electron orbitals overlap
→ change where the electrons prefer to be
→ change the electrical behavior.
And apparently the important thing isn’t necessarily making a big wrinkle.
It’s making a sharp one.
A tiny /\ can matter more electrically than a much larger, gently curved hill.
So the TL;DR is: Scientists bent one-atom-thick graphene almost as sharply as atomic bonds allow, and the bend itself rearranged the electrons enough to create a surprisingly strong electrical polarization. That suggests that, at the nanoscale, engineers may eventually be able to control electronics not just by changing materials, but literally by sculpting their shape.
the properties might be completely different for a different topologies and symmetries so not necessarily. the reasoning is right though and would be an obvious theoretical test .
jared_number_two | 12 hours ago
In a new study, the team reports that extremely sharp bends changed graphene’s local electrical potential in ways that closely matched atomic-scale theoretical calculations.
The researchers add they’ve now seen flexoelectricity in graphene, meaning uneven bending creates a separation of electrical charge. In one-atom-thick graphene, however, the researchers argue that the extreme bend does something more unusual. It changes how electron orbitals overlap, redistributing electrons around the wrinkle.
That makes this a case of what the researchers call quantum orbital flexoelectricity.
Aeon1508 | 12 hours ago
This explanation seems detailed and yet helps me understand what's happening none.
glakhtchpth | 11 hours ago
I understood every word of that explanation, but in aggregate, mud.
Wet_Side_Down | 12 hours ago
Sort of like the Windows Help joke, the answer was technically accurate but of no help whatsoever
esmifra | 11 hours ago
the way I read it, it means smaller transistors. Considering how silicon is reaching its miniaturization limit, it could mean graphene could be used to allow smaller transistors.
If they could mass produce this, which I significantly doubt.
I could be wrong though.
sweetica | 10 hours ago
Yeah, I think they're trying to say that the wrinkle caused by the graphene is opening up orbital space for the atoms. So instead of them all being in a neat little line and overlapping each other, they are spread out a little bit more around the bend of the wrinkle in the graphene thus giving more space to the orbiting electrons of the atom.
acapulcoblues | 10 hours ago
What benefit it there to giving more space to the to the orbiting electrons? Do they move more efficiently? How does this impact the overall microchip’s capability?
citizen42069101 | 9 hours ago
If they can wrap it around layers of silicon you could effectively have a one atom diameter circuit.
Or something like that.
acapulcoblues | 9 hours ago
So lower resistance and better energy efficiency?
JoelnIliketoshare | 9 hours ago
Not yet atleast.
Aeon1508 | 9 hours ago
I don't think we need more miniaturized or better transistors for the mass market at this point anyway.
but being able to do it for supercomputers for specific uses is great
veritoast | 9 hours ago
By bending the graphene strands this way, we open up the potential for highly efficient energy transfer with minimal heat generation. Think transformers that never get warm or motors that can run at high velocities without heating up.
This will allow the practical use of static and piezoelectric inputs to drive things like cell phones or even the ability to finally harness lightning within super-capacitors at scale.
At least, I think that’s what it means, I could be wrong. I’m not sure, I studied art history.
claws76 | 9 hours ago
Snooped around and got it.. I think. The bend was so small and sharp that individual atoms encrouch each other's electron cloud. Because of this there is a sharp bend where the electron clouds interfere with each other and now the electrons like parts of this combined cloud more than the other. So rather than a neutral, balanced or symmetrical distribution, they are more likely to be at certain spots that the other. So it creates a charged area, a net dipole, because of which there is a potential difference that can be measured between the spots that have higher vs lower probabiloty of electrons existing. (Electrons have probabilstic distrubution in their orbitals, not real locations we can catch them at)
Bearded_Toast | 9 hours ago
That is how I feel about cutting edge science.
dennismfrancisart | 8 hours ago
It sounds like Scotty explaining how the Enterprise will make their escape in this week's episode.
Super_Range45 | 12 hours ago
So what do we get? A capacitor or something?
Kermit_the_hog | 10 hours ago
Sharpest possible razor for shaving an electrically charged elephant.
wthulhu | 9 hours ago
*spherical elephant in a 0k vacuum
love_is_an_action | 8 hours ago
It’s about fuckin’ time tbh.
tim125 | 8 hours ago
7 blades
Kermit_the_hog | 8 hours ago
7-Blades, Packed for the derm of your pachyderm!
I think we’ve got a slogan!
ReasonablyBadass | 11 hours ago
Superconductor? Fingers crossed?
MuscaMurum | 10 hours ago
Flux capacitor
2Throwscrewsatit | 12 hours ago
Flexo is evil
Crashman09 | 11 hours ago
Magnetic goatee intensifies
amalgaman | 11 hours ago
“You fools! I’ve triggered the quantum orbital flexoelectric field surrounding you. You will soon be bent and wrinkly and you cannot escape!”
Maniacal laugh ensues
morganational | 11 hours ago
"Nah, I'm just kiddin', you guys are great."
LordBalderdash | 10 hours ago
Shut up baby I know it
denialragnest | 11 hours ago
Bending the graphene wire modifies electron sharing across nuclei without covalent bonding? Or something else?
yupidup | 11 hours ago
We need more commenters like you, good Redditor
tHATmakesNOsenseToME | 10 hours ago
But I mean we already knew that.
kingsRook_q3w | 9 hours ago
Are we anywhere near being able to replicate this process on mass production scale though?
Folks seem to be thinking this process can make it possible to create much smaller circuits, but I’m not aware of any automated facility/tooling even being close to capable of this on a large scale. Wouldn’t creating a process like that be an even larger technological leap than the discovery/experiment itself?
Don’t get me wrong, this is super cool. Just not sure it will have any practical applications in the near future.
asdsav | 12 hours ago
I dont understand what they bend
Red_Viper9 | 11 hours ago
Bonds
Super_Range45 | 11 hours ago
Jame's Bonds
nRGon12 | 11 hours ago
I thought he liked it shaken, not bent.
rocket_beer | 11 hours ago
James’ ? 🤷🏻♂️
Super_Range45 | 11 hours ago
They only sent the one Jame this time.
rocket_beer | 11 hours ago
Ah yes of course. Apologies as I see my error.
Carry on
Super_Range45 | 11 hours ago
Quite right.
bornparadox | 11 hours ago
What force bends the bonds? Who is the bond bender?
ol0pl0x | 11 hours ago
Molybdenum disulfide which is another atom thin material. It's a fairly clean way to study since the wrinkles are a reaction.
SerpentBride | 11 hours ago
It’s graphene so it’s a form of earthbending.
reallyrn | 11 hours ago
Polarity comes from somewhere, and scientists might have actually done what napkin math says should happen. Our imaginations matched the expectation of reality related to modeling this extreme physics. This sounds like the step before greatness, the least applicable yet closest to real-world application kind of discovery. Cue the gray confetti and the deadpan cheering.
But seriously, if these kinds of bends could be made into something like corrugated cardboard the material would be one of the top materials in its class. Now it's one step closer out of the lab, if only anybody knew what to do with it.
sofsip | 11 hours ago
Claude ELI5:
Short version: bend a one-atom-thick sheet of carbon sharply enough and it spontaneously develops a plus side and a minus side, purely from the shape. The idea was predicted in 2008 — that a sharp enough bend would push electrons out of balance and produce electrical polarization from geometry alone. Nobody could confirm it, because the bend happens over distances close to the size of individual atoms, where microscopes struggle to measure curvature.
H4llifax | 11 hours ago
I'm assuming this could be used to "attach" certain points if you bring together two of these structures? Or what would this effect be useful for, and how could the structure be maintained?!
deezdanglin | 11 hours ago
NO Engineer nor a Quantum Physist, could this be used in computing in some way?
Mictlantecuhtli | 10 hours ago
Downvote for AI use
Myquil-Wylsun | 10 hours ago
At least they disclosed it
Semi-onm | 11 hours ago
So now we just 1 billion nanogenerators to attach and bam... free everything!
deezdanglin | 11 hours ago
You want Replicators? Bc that's how you get Replicators.
dm80x86 | 10 hours ago
StarTrek or StarGate?
deezdanglin | 9 hours ago
With a hard, capital R
ongrabbits | 8 hours ago
Not if you monetize it!
Glidepath22 | 9 hours ago
What a sloppy article and conclusion, here GPTs ELI10: ELI5: Graphene is basically a sheet of carbon that’s only one atom thick, arranged like microscopic chicken wire.
Normally it’s pretty flat, and its electrons are distributed fairly evenly above and below the sheet.
What these researchers found is that if you put an insanely sharp wrinkle in graphene — we’re talking a bend only a few atoms across — something weird happens to the electrons.
Think of the electrons as fuzzy clouds around the carbon atoms. When the graphene is flat, those clouds are symmetrical. But bend the sheet hard enough and those electron clouds get distorted. More electronic charge shifts toward one side of the bend and away from the other.
So the wrinkle basically develops a tiny:
negative side ↔ positive side
That effect is called flexoelectricity: uneven bending of a material causes electrical polarization.
And the really interesting part is that the effect gets extremely strong when the bend becomes atomically sharp.
This doesn’t mean you’ve made a tiny free-energy generator. The total wrinkle is absurdly small. It means the electrical effect per unit area is huge.
The researchers also found that the wrinkle changes graphene’s local electrical potential. So, very roughly, an electron traveling through the sheet sees something like:
flat graphene → electrical speed bump → flat graphene.
That’s potentially a big deal because normally, if engineers want one part of a material to behave electrically differently from another part, they change its chemistry, add different atoms, layer different materials together, etc.
This research suggests another possibility:
Don’t change what the material is made of. Change its shape.
So someday you could imagine one continuous sheet of graphene where engineers deliberately create microscopic folds:
flat → wrinkle → flat → wrinkle → flat
and those wrinkles act as electrical barriers, junctions, sensors, or other functional parts of a device.
Basically electronic origami.
Some possible applications:
• Ridiculously sensitive pressure sensors. Tiny pressure changes the wrinkle’s curvature, which changes its electrical signal.
• Vibration/motion sensors. Mechanical movement could be converted into an electrical signal at extremely small scales.
• Flexible electronics. Since graphene is only one atom thick, this could potentially be useful in flexible displays, electronic skin, wearable sensors, medical patches, etc.
• Chemical/biological sensors. If a molecule landing on the graphene slightly changes the wrinkle or its electronic environment, that change might be electrically detectable.
• Nanoelectromechanical machines. Tiny moving components could mechanically deform graphene and have that deformation directly read out electrically.
• Electronics made by geometry. Instead of doping a semiconductor differently in different places, engineers might eventually create some electrical structures simply by controlling where graphene is flat versus sharply curved.
• Stacks of 2D materials. Graphene can be layered with other atomically thin materials, and engineered wrinkles might let researchers create completely new kinds of tiny electronic junctions.
There is one important caveat:
This doesn’t suddenly make graphene a replacement for silicon CPUs.
Graphene still lacks the convenient semiconductor band gap that lets silicon transistors switch cleanly between ON and OFF. The wrinkles change graphene’s local electronic potential, but they don’t magically solve every graphene-transistor problem.
Also, most of those applications are still possible future applications, not products these scientists built.
The deeper scientific point is arguably cooler anyway.
At human scales we tend to think:
shape = mechanical property
and
electricity = electronic property
But once something is only an atom thick, those two things stop being independent.
Change the shape
→ change where the atoms sit
→ change how their electron orbitals overlap
→ change where the electrons prefer to be
→ change the electrical behavior.
And apparently the important thing isn’t necessarily making a big wrinkle.
It’s making a sharp one.
A tiny /\ can matter more electrically than a much larger, gently curved hill.
So the TL;DR is:
Scientists bent one-atom-thick graphene almost as sharply as atomic bonds allow, and the bend itself rearranged the electrons enough to create a surprisingly strong electrical polarization. That suggests that, at the nanoscale, engineers may eventually be able to control electronics not just by changing materials, but literally by sculpting their shape.
SlaterHauge | 8 hours ago
I could see this being very useful for super sensitive sensors
TacoPi | 11 hours ago
Wouldn’t these effects be apparent in carbon nanotubes from their curvature?
Curleysound | 11 hours ago
Not an expert but my reading is that they are bending these way farther than that. To the point the individual atomic electron shells overlap
perceptualmotion | 9 hours ago
the properties might be completely different for a different topologies and symmetries so not necessarily. the reasoning is right though and would be an obvious theoretical test .