Reed Richards follows Sue in Korea

Korean researchers are not only making giant leaps towards invisibility¹: they're also going for thinness and flexibility.

A Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT) - Sungkyunkwan University (Pr. Hong Byung-hee) team found a way of mass producing graphene nanofilms via Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD).

I know, this doesn't sound like the sexiest piece of news ever, and it isn't.

But it could mean the end of the silicon, and major disruptions in micro-electronics as we know them.

Not to mention endless applications for silicon semicon giant Samsung (the S in SAIT) : "the wafer-scale graphene is expected to be used in flexible displays, wearable computers and advanced transistors and electrodes. It can also replace indium tin oxide, used extensively in the production of touch-screen panels and solar cells". And as one could have guessed, this team intends "to develop next-generation ultra high-speed nano memory chips, transparent flexible displays and solar cells." (AsiaPulse / COMTEX).

Of course, Invisible Woman and Mr Fantastic will not be available right away. And nowadays, IT are under the spell of other members of the Fantastic Four... The Bear Market Thing and The Bottomline Human Torch ?

But now is the time for leaders to make the difference. Now is the time to invest in R&D. We all know major innovations will come out of this Not-So-Great Depression. And the so called "new technologies" need Change as badly as the rest of us.

Live from Korea's Graphene Valley...



1 - I already mentioned the KAIST and its Transparent Resistive Random Access Memory ("TRRAM : don't miss this one !" - 20081215) but last autumn, the SAIT developped "a fully transparent non-volatile memory with a conventional sandwich gate insulators structure based on a wide band gap semi-conductive oxide of amorphous gallium indium zinc oxide", a.k.a. amorphous GaInZnO or a-GIZO. Even if it's closer to 80% than actually "fully" transparent, that's something. The beauty of it : whether it works or not, a-GIZO GIZMOs are not to be seen.