Graphene reinforced plastics
Introduction
It is an almost transparent material. A sheet one atom thick is about 200 times stronger than the strongest current steel, its density being more or less the same as that of carbon fiber, and about five times lighter than aluminum.
It is an allotrope of carbon, a flat hexagonal tessellation formed by carbon atoms and covalent bonds that are generated from the superposition of the hybrids "Hybridization (chemistry)") sp "Hybridization (chemistry)") of the bonded carbons.
In 2004, graphene was rediscovered, isolated and researched at the University of Manchester by Andréy Gueim and Konstantín Novosiólov. In 2010, Gueim and Novosiólov received the Nobel Prize in Physics for their revolutionary discoveries about this material.[1][2].
Through sp hybridization, the bond angles, at 120°, of the hexagonal structure of graphene are better explained. As each of the carbons contains four valence electrons "Valence (chemistry)") in the hybridized state, three of those electrons are housed in the sp hybrids, and form the skeleton of simple covalent bonds of the structure.[3].
The excess electron is housed in a p-type atomic orbital perpendicular to the plane of the hybrids. The lateral overlap of these orbitals gives rise to the formation of π-type orbitals. Some of these combinations lead to a gigantic delocalized molecular orbital between all the carbon atoms that make up the graphene layer.
The name comes from the exchange - in the word graphite - of suffixes: "ite" for "ene": typical of carbons with double bonds. In reality, the structure of graphite can be considered a stack of a large number of superimposed graphene sheets.[4] The bonds between the different stacked graphene layers are due to Van der Waals forces and interactions of the π orbitals of the carbon atoms.
In graphene the length of the carbon-carbon bonds is approximately 142 pm (picometers). It is the basic structural component of all other graphitic elements, including graphite itself, carbon nanotubes, and fullerenes.
This structure can also be considered an extremely extensive aromatic molecule in both spatial directions. That is, it would be the limiting case of a family of flat polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon molecules called graphenes.
Graphene is used as bulletproof armor and is also used for the world's safest and most unbreakable cars thanks to its highly resistant components.