Comment Re:Graphene: easy to use, hard to produce (Score 1) 129
The situation was similar for transistors, if you recall: the first solid-state transistor was invented in 1947...
Actually, the situation was very different for the transistor. The 1947 invention was the point-contact transistor. The bipolar junction silicon transistor was invented in 1954 and the first commercial transistor radio was released the same year (both by TI): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
So less than 7 years from "it's possible" to the first release of perhaps the most famous application.
Microchips, which you mention for some reason, are irrelevant: the impact of the transistor was huge long before microchips became relevant.
Graphene, by contrast, is a decade past discovery. Ten years ago we were told two things about graphene:
1) no one knows how to produce it in bulk
2) if we could produce it in bulk there would be awesome things that could be done with it.
Continuing to publish stories a decade later that amplify the awesome things that could be done with it, when there has apparently been little or no progress in its mass production, is some combination of boring/frustrating/stupid. We don't really need to be continually told, "The list of things you can't yet to do with graphene, and won't ever be able to do with graphene in the foreseeable future, continues to lengthen."
It just isn't interesting to tell these stories. Come back and talk about graphene when there is progress on mass production. That is interesting. Adding to the already long list of things that will never be made out of it because no one can figure out how to mass produce it is not.