The ultimate layman (me!) wonders why they've been waffling on about graphene and how great/super/smashing it is for well over a decade but, as yet, has anything practical been produced?
Back in about 2008 there was gonna be phone batteries that charged in a few minutes and would run for 3+ days...Fermi says "where are they?"
Well the article actually states that nothing really new has been found. Although you'd think something had been from the headline.
It's the fractional quantum hall effect, something that got the nobel prize for physics in 1998, so it's reasonably old...however I think this is worth an article because it was observed in graphene, whereas before it was observed in some weird set ups.
If it's been observed in graphene, then potentially we can use it in some pretty robust situations. Graphene has loads of great properties, so if we could build stuff with it, we can now, I assume, throw in this fractional quantum hall effect. But...
Why haven't you seen much coming from it?
Well, to go back and look at other weird science (at the time) Faraday was doing public lectures, in the 1850s, demonstrating his findings in electricity and (I think) a member of parliament asked him 'what was use of all this new science'. He replied, "one day, you'll tax it.". It's going to take a while, I think, before graphene/fullerene enters actual products and devices, but eventually (assuming civilisation doesn't destroy itself) this will come through. Not ten years - there's a lot of stuff still to work out - but we're on the way. I think it's probably a bit like Nuclear fusion. It should be great when we figure that out properly and really change our world for the good.
Nuclear fusion is a bad example, it's constantly been 50 years till it will 'work'. For the past fifty years. But I do think it will eventually work.