Graphene’s shining light could lead to super-fast internet

Internet connection speeds could be tens of times faster than they currently are, thanks to research by University of Manchester scientists using wonder material graphene. A collaboration between the Universities of Manchester and Cambridge, which includes scientists Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov, has discovered a crucial recipe for improving characteristics of graphene devices for use as photodetectors in future high-speed optical. By combining graphene with metallic nanostructures, they show a twentyfold enhancement in harvesting light by graphene, which paves the way for advances in high-speed internet and other. By putting two closely-spaced metallic wires on top of graphene and shining light on this structure, researchers previously showed that this generates electric power. This simple device presents an elementary solar cell. More importantly for applications, such graphene devices can be incredibly fast, tens and potentially hundred times faster than communication rates in the fastest internet cables, which is due to the unique nature of electrons in graphene, their high mobility and high velocity. The major stumbling block towards practical applications for these otherwise very promising devices has so far been their low efficiency.