"Graphene Armour" Topic

bigthink.com/ideas/24381

So how soon will wearable body armour be possible given how strong this stuff is alleged to be?

If it is made in such a way to channel electricity away from the wearer could it make normal clothes proof against tasers and similar?

Without even reading it, I have to say yes.
Science fiction has been full of such magic armor for years, and the writers have even postulated this stuff before it was even discovered.

This couild also explain why Imperial Stormtroopers can't shoot for . Maybe they can, but the Jedi graphene factories are really good at what they do.

You'd think the stormtroopers could have some graphene armour too and then they wouldn't just die when they got shot by small arms fire.

Everyone knows that the Rebel Scum use illegally obtained teflon blasters (aka "Troop Killers")!

If you hit something with enough KE, it doesn't matter that the projectile was stopped by the armor. There's still going to be enough transferred energy that the wearer is pulp on the inside of the armor.

So how soon will wearable body armour be possible given how strong this stuff is alleged to be?

Step one: Make it into threads/sheets.

Step two: Make those threads/sheets into a thicker layer, without sacrificing the strength of the graphene in the process.

Step three: Make those thicker layers into armor plates, again without sacrificing the strength of the graphene in the process.

Step four: Make the finished armor some semblance of affordable (currently defined as less than $25,000 per suit), so that a government will actually buy the stuff.

I figure about 20 years before we get to step 2. Once you get to the ability to shape plates, then it's a matter of doing it cheaply enough to buy (on average, 10 years).

This is way cool stuff – and I love that the Nobel prize winner (1) is the same guy who levitated the frog and won an IgNobel prize for it, and (2) managed to get a layer one molecule thick using Scotch tape, thereby scooping all of the other boffins who were trying to do the same thing by high tech methods.

If it is made in such a way to channel electricity away from the wearer could it make normal clothes proof against tasers and similar?

Channel it away to where? It's got to ground to something.

Doug

Channel it away to the ground. If you had clothes made from the stuff wouldn't the electricty, choosing the path of least resistance, go through the mesh from your jacket to your pants to your shoes to the ground without going through your squishy middle bits?

Thick sheets of this stuff are already available, and known as graphite….

I think its potential as armour is limited.

Thick sheets of this stuff are already available, and known as graphite….

I think its potential as armour is limited.

Erm no. This is like saying charcoal is the same thing as the reinforced carbon composite on the leading edges of the space shuttle…

They are similar, but the point about graphene is that it is "large," single-molecule planar sheets of the stuff. As a result, graphene has one of the highest tensile strengths known (200x steel).

As for thermal conductivity (ie resist laser blasts) it has the highest known (or that I know of), about 5000W/m-K. Stainless steel varies up to about 45W/m-K, copper is about 400.

Not really – graphene is simply a single atom thick level taken from a lump of graphite….

The Nobel Prize was given for the technique of isolating it, as much for the properties of the substance themselves.

Put several layers of graphene together and the physical properties of carbon mean that it'll be graphite.

Carbon can be put together in many ways – but as a sheet it forms pencils.

Channel it away to the ground. If you had clothes made from the stuff wouldn't the electricty, choosing the path of least resistance, go through the mesh from your jacket to your pants to your shoes to the ground without going through your squishy middle bits?

It would, so long as there was a complete insulative barrier between your squishy bits and the outer conductive layer of this stuff. One miniscule point of contact, and you would lose the effect – and depending on the nature of the charge involved, it might not even need to be physical contact – just a gap which would allow an arc. I think, in general, you'd be much better off in a suit of totally NONconductive material.

Doug

Nice page on the levitating frog, by the way – link

Also – YouTube link

Just drag a small tape of graphene on the ground from your pantleg. That should keep your squishy bits out of the preferred groundpath.

It's like working on live electrical lines. You're perfectly safe as long as you don't have a ground through your body.

where as graphene, has all its valencies in 3 dimensions.

I think you mean graphene has its valencies in 2 dimensions – and I think you're right that that might be the significant difference. The one molecule thin layers would thin essentially be independent of each other, which could result in all sorts of interesting effects. I'm certainly no expert though – I can't even levitate a frog.

That should keep your squishy bits out of the preferred groundpath.

It would work, but I'd still rather NOT have a putative enormous current running through my clothing – give me a suit of something insulative instead, thank you.

Doug

I'm assuming that since graphene is essentially a one-atom thick layer of graphite, if you add layers together to make it thicker, you end up back with graphite, which is, after all, lots of loosely bonded sheets one on top of the other.

The big thing about graphene is, I think, the fact it's one-atom thick, is all.

Multiple layers of graphene would make the armor as strong as you want. The problem as I understand is that it is flexible so will bend and shape around the projectile and would allow it to enter the body. It wouldn't break so the projectile could be pulled out of the wound by pulling on the graphene. Some sort of hard inserts have to be placed between the layers to keep the graphene from deforming and to spread out the shock trauma.

I assume the graphene sheets wouldn't be stacked on top of each other (otherwise you would just get graphite), they would form a composite with something else, giving great strength.