I was taught in high school that the US was running out of its resources and that Canada still had much of its resources. That was decades ago. As well, throughout the years, usually during a vote in Québec about separating, I’ve heard rumblings about the US absorbing part or all of Canada as something they call ‘Manifest Destiny,’ which dates back to the 19th century.
Unlike the previous forays Into Manifest Destiny, this one has not been precipitated by any discussion of separation.
Manifest Destiny
It took a while for that phrase to emerge this time but when it finally did the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) online news published a January 19, 2025 article by Ainsley Hawthorn providing some context for the term, Note: Links have been removed,
U.S. president-elect Donald Trump says he’s prepared to use economic force to turn Canada into America’s 51st state, and it’s making Canadians — two-thirds of whom believe he’s sincere — anxious.
But the last time Canada faced the threat of American annexation, it united us more than ever before, leading to the foundation of our country as we know it today.
In the 1860s, several prominent U.S. politicians advocated for annexing the colonies of British North America.
“I look on Rupert’s Land [modern-day Manitoba and parts of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Nunavut, Ontario, and Quebec] and Canada, and see how an ingenious people and a capable, enlightened government are occupied with bridging rivers and making railroads and telegraphs,” Secretary of State William Henry Seward told a crowd in St. Paul, Minn. while campaigning on behalf of presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln.
“I am able to say, it is very well; you are building excellent states to be hereafter admitted into the American Union.”
Seward believed in Manifest Destiny, the doctrine that the United States would inevitably expand across the entire North American continent. While he seems to have preferred to acquire territory through negotiation rather than aggression, Canadians weren’t wholly assured of America’s peaceful intentions.
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In the late 1850s and early 1860s, Canadian parliament had been so deadlocked it had practically come to a standstill. Within just a few years, American pressure created a sense of unity so great it led to Confederation.
The current conversation around annexation is likewise uniting Canada’s leaders to a degree we’ve rarely seen in recent years.
Representatives across the political spectrum are sharing a common message, the same message as British North Americans in the late nineteenth century: despite our problems, Canadians value Canada.
Critical minerals and water
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had a few comments to make about US President Donald Trump’s motivation for ‘absorbing’ Canada as the 51st state, from a February 7, 2025 CBC news online article by Peter Zimonjic, ·
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told business leaders at the Canada-U.S. Economic Summit in Toronto that U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to annex Canada “is a real thing” motivated by his desire to tap into the country’s critical minerals.
“Mr. Trump has it in mind that the easiest way to do it is absorbing our country and it is a real thing,” Trudeau said, before a microphone cut out at the start of the closed-door meeting.
The prime minister made the remarks to more than 100 business leaders after delivering an opening address to the summit Friday morning [February 7, 2025], outlining the key issues facing the country when it comes to Canada’s trading relationship with the U.S.
After the opening address, media were ushered out of the room when a microphone that was left on picked up what was only meant to be heard by attendees [emphasis mine].
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Automotive Parts Manufacturers’ Association president Flavio Volpe was in the room when Trudeau made the comments. He said the prime minister went on to say that Trump is driven because the U.S. could benefit from Canada’s critical mineral resources.
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There was more, from a February 7, 2025 article by Nick Taylor-Vaisey for Politico., Note: A link has been removed,
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In remarks caught on tape by The Toronto Star, Trudeau suggested the president is keenly aware of Canada’s vast mineral resources. “I suggest that not only does the Trump administration know how many critical minerals we have but that may be even why they keep talking about absorbing us and making us the 51st state,” Trudeau said.
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All of this reminded me of US President Joe Biden’s visit to Canada and his interest in critical minerals which I mentioned briefly in my comments about the 2023 federal budget, from my April 17, 2023 posting (scroll down to the ‘Canadian economic theory (the staples theory), mining, nuclear energy, quantum science, and more’ subhead,
Critical minerals are getting a lot of attention these days. (They were featured in the 2022 budget, see my April 19, 2022 posting, scroll down to the Mining subhead.) This year, US President Joe Biden, in his first visit to Canada as President, singled out critical minerals at the end of his 28 hour state visit (from a March 24, 2023 CBC news online article by Alexander Panetta; Note: Links have been removed),
There was a pot of gold at the end of President Joe Biden’s jaunt to Canada. It’s going to Canada’s mining sector.
The U.S. military will deliver funds this spring to critical minerals projects in both the U.S. and Canada. The goal is to accelerate the development of a critical minerals industry on this continent.
The context is the United States’ intensifying rivalry with China.
The U.S. is desperate to reduce its reliance on its adversary for materials needed to power electric vehicles, electronics and many other products, and has set aside hundreds of millions of dollars under a program called the Defence Production Act.
The Pentagon already has told Canadian companies they would be eligible to apply. It has said the cash would arrive as grants, not loans.
On Friday [March 24, 2023], before Biden left Ottawa, he promised they’ll get some.
The White House and the Prime Minister’s Office announced that companies from both countries will be eligible this spring for money from a $250 million US fund.
Which Canadian companies? The leaders didn’t say. Canadian officials have provided the U.S. with a list of at least 70 projects that could warrant U.S. funding.
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“Our nations are blessed with incredible natural resources,” Biden told Canadian parliamentarians during his speech in the House of Commons.
“Canada in particular has large quantities of critical minerals [emphasis mine] that are essential for our clean energy future, for the world’s clean energy future.
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I don’t think there’s any question that the US knows how much, where, and how easily ‘extractable’ Canadian critical minerals might be.
Pressure builds
On the same day (Monday, February 3, 2025) the tariffs were postponed for a month,Trudeau had two telephone calls with US president Donald Trump. According to a February 9, 2025 article by Steve Chase and Stefanie Marotta for the Globe and Mail, Trump and his minions are exploring the possibility of acquiring Canada by means other than a trade war or economic domination,
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“He [Trudeau] talked about two phone conversations he had with Mr. Trump on Monday [February 3, 2025] before the President agreed to delay to steep tariffs on Canadian goods for 30 days.n
During the calls, the Prime Minister recalled Mr. Trump referred to a four-page memo that included a list of grievances he had with Canadian trade and commercial rules, including the President’s false claim that US banks are unable to operate in Canada. …
In the second conversation with Mr. Trump on Monday, the Prime Minister told the summit, the President asked him whether he was familiar with the Treaty of 1908, a pact between the United States and Britain that defined the border between the United States and Canada. he told Mr. Trudeau, he should look it up.
Mr. Trudeau told the summit he thought the treaty had been superseded by other developments such as the repatriation the Canadian Constitution – in other words, that the border cannot be dissolved by repealing that treaty. He told the audience that international law would prevent the dissolution 1908 Treaty leading to the erasure of the border. For example, various international laws define sovereign borders, including the United Nationals Charter of which both countries are signatories and which has protection to territorial integrity.
A source familiar with the calls said Mr. Trump’s reference to the 1908 Treaty was taken as an implied threat. … [p. A3 in paper version]
I imagine Mr. Trump and/or his minions will keep trying to find one pretext or another for this attempt to absorb or annex or wage war (economically or otherwise) on Canada.
What makes Canadian (and Greenlandic) minerals and water so important?
You may have noticed the January 21, 2025 announcement by Mr. Trump about the ‘Stargate Project,’ a proposed US $500B AI infrastructure company (you can find more about the Stargate Project (Stargate LLC) in its Wikipedia entry).
Most likely not a coincidence, on February 10, 2025 President of France, Emmanuel Macron announced a 109B euros investment in French AI sector, from the February 9, 2025 Reuters preannouncement article,
France will announce private sector investments totalling some 109 billion euros ($112.5 billion [US]) in its artificial intelligence sector during the Paris AI summit which opens on Monday, President Emmanuel Macron said.
The financing includes plans by Canadian investment firm [emphasis mine] Brookfield to invest 20 billion euros in AI projects in France and financing from the United Arab Emirates which could hit 50 billion euros in the years ahead, Macron’s office said.
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Big projects, non? It’s no surprise critical minerals will be necessary but the need for massive amounts of water may be. My October 16, 2023 posting focuses on water and AI development, specifically ChatGPT-4,
A September 9, 2023 news item (an Associated Press article by Matt O’Brien and Hannah Fingerhut) on phys.org and also published September 12, 2023 on the Iowa Public Radio website, describe an unexpected cost for building ChatGPT and other AI agents, Note: Links [in the excerpt] have been removed,
The cost of building an artificial intelligence product like ChatGPT can be hard to measure.
But one thing Microsoft-backed OpenAI needed for its technology was plenty of water [emphases mine], pulled from the watershed of the Raccoon and Des Moines rivers in central Iowa to cool a powerful supercomputer as it helped teach its AI systems how to mimic human writing.
As they race to capitalize on a craze for generative AI, leading tech developers including Microsoft, OpenAI and Google have acknowledged that growing demand for their AI tools carries hefty costs, from expensive semiconductors to an increase in water consumption.
But they’re often secretive about the specifics. Few people in Iowa knew about its status as a birthplace of OpenAI’s most advanced large language model, GPT-4, before a top Microsoft executive said in a speech it “was literally made next to cornfields west of Des Moines.”
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In its latest environmental report, Microsoft disclosed that its global water consumption spiked 34% from 2021 to 2022 (to nearly 1.7 billion gallons , or more than 2,500 Olympic-sized swimming pools), a sharp increase compared to previous years that outside researchers tie to its AI research. [emphases mine]
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As for how much water was diverted in Iowa for a data centre project, from my October 16, 2023 posting
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Jason Clayworth’s September 18, 2023 article for AXIOS describes the issue from the Iowan perspective, Note: Links [from the excerpt] have been removed,
Future data center projects in West Des Moines will only be considered if Microsoft can implement technology that can “significantly reduce peak water usage,” the Associated Press reports.
Why it matters: Microsoft’s five WDM data centers — the “epicenter for advancing AI” — represent more than $5 billion in investments in the last 15 years.
Yes, but: They consumed as much as 11.5 million gallons of water a month for cooling, or about 6% of WDM’s total usage during peak summer usage during the last two years, according to information from West Des Moines Water Works.
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The bottom line is that these technologies consume a lot of water and require critical minerals.
Greenland
Evan Dyer’s January 16, 2025 article for CBC news online describes both US military strategic interests and hunger for resources, Note 1: Article links have been removed; Note 2: I have added one link to a Wikipedia entry,
The person who first put a bug in Donald Trump’s ear about Greenland — if a 2022 biography is to be believed — was his friend Ronald Lauder, a New York billionaire and heir to the Estée Lauder cosmetics fortune.
But it would be wrong to believe that U.S. interest in Greenland originated with idle chatter at the country club, rather than real strategic considerations.
Trump’s talk of using force to annex Greenland — which would be an unprovoked act of war against a NATO ally — has been rebuked by Greenlandic, Danish and European leaders. A Fox News team that travelled to Greenland’s capital Nuuk reported back to the Trump-friendly show Fox & Friends that “most of the people we spoke with did not support Trump’s comments and found them offensive.”
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Certainly, military considerations motivated the last U.S. attempt at buying Greenland in 1946.
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The military value to the U.S. of acquiring Greenland is much less clear in 2025 than it was in 1946.
Russian nuclear submarines no longer need to traverse the GIUK [the GIUK gap; “{sometimes written G-I-UK} is an area in the northern Atlantic Ocean that forms a naval choke point. Its name is an acronym for Greenland, Iceland, and the United Kingdom, the gap being the two stretches of open ocean among these three landmasses.”]. They can launch their missiles from closer to home.
And in any case, the U.S. already has a military presence on Greenland, used for early warning, satellite tracking and marine surveillance. The Pentagon simply ignored Denmark’s 1957 ban on nuclear weapons on Greenlandic territory. Indeed, an American B-52 bomber carrying four hydrogen bombs crashed in Greenland in 1968.
“The U.S. already has almost unhindered access [emphasis mine], and just building on their relationship with Greenland is going to do far more good than talk of acquisition,” said Dwayne Menezes, director of the Polar Research and Policy Initiative in London.
The complication, he says, is Greenland’s own independence movement. All existing defence agreements involving the U.S. presence in Greenland are between Washington and the Kingdom of Denmark. [emphasis mine]
“They can’t control what’s happening between Denmark and Greenland,” Menezes said. “Over the long term, the only way to mitigate that risk altogether is by acquiring Greenland.”
Menezes also doesn’t believe U.S. interest in Greenland is purely military.
And Trump’s incoming national security adviser Michael Waltz [emphasis mine] appeared to confirm as much when asked by Fox News why the administration wanted Greenland.
“This is about critical minerals, this is about natural resources [emphasis mine]. This is about, as the ice caps pull back, the Chinese are now cranking out icebreakers and are pushing up there.”
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While the United States has an abundance of natural resources, it risks coming up short in two vital areas: rare-earth minerals and freshwater.
Greenland’s apparent barrenness belies its richness in those two key 21st-century resources.
The U.S. rise to superpower was driven partly by the good fortune of having abundant reserves of oil, which fuelled its industrial growth. The country is still a net exporter of petroleum.
China, Washington’s chief strategic rival, had no such luck. It has to import more than two-thirds of its oil, and is now importing more than six times as much as it did in 2000.
But the future may not favour the U.S. as much as the past.
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I stand corrected, where oil is concerned. From Dyer’s January 16, 2025 article, Note: Links have been removed,
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It’s China, and not the U.S., that nature blessed with rich deposits of rare-earth elements, a collection of 17 metals such as yttrium and scandium that are increasingly necessary for high-tech applications from cellphones and flat-screen TVs to electric cars.
The rare-earth element neodymium is an essential part of many computer hard drives and defence systems including electronic displays, guidance systems, lasers, radar and sonar.
Three decades ago, the U.S. produced a third of the world’s rare-earth elements, and China about 40 per cent. By 2011, China had 97 per cent of world production, and its government was increasingly limiting and controlling exports.
The U.S. has responded by opening new mines and spurring recovery and recycling to reduce dependence on China.
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Such efforts have allowed the U.S. to claw back about 20 per cent of the world’s annual production of rare-earth elements. But that doesn’t change the fact that China has about 44 million tonnes of reserves, compared to fewer than two million in the U.S.
“There’s a huge dependency on China,” said Menezes. “It offers China the economic leverage, in the midst of a trade war in particular, to restrict supply to the West, thus crippling industries like defence, the green transition. This is where Greenland comes in.”
Greenland’s known reserves are almost equivalent to those of the entire U.S., and much more may lie beneath its icebound landscape.
“Greenland is believed to be able to meet at least 25 per cent of global rare-earth demand well into the future,” he said.
An abundance of freshwater
The melting ice caps referenced by Trump’s nominee for national security adviser are another Greenlandic resource the world is increasingly interested in.
Seventy per cent of the world’s freshwater is locked up in the Antarctic ice cap. Of the remainder, two-thirds is in Greenland, in a massive ice cap that is turning to liquid at nearly twice the volume of melting in Antarctica.
“We know this because you can weigh the ice sheet from satellites,” said Christian Schoof, a professor of Earth, ocean and atmospheric sciences at the University of British Columbia who spent part of last year in Greenland studying ice cap melting.
“The ice sheet is heavy enough that it affects the orbit of satellites going over it. And you can record the change in that acceleration of satellites due to the ice sheet over time, and directly weigh the ice sheet.”
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“There is a growing demand for freshwater on the world market, and the use of the vast water potential in Greenland may contribute to meeting this demand,” the Greenland government announces on its website.
The Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland found 10 locations that were suitable for the commercial exploitation of Greenland’s ice and water, and has already issued a number of licenses.
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Schoof told CBC News that past projects that attempted to tow Greenlandic ice to irrigate farms in the Middle East “haven’t really taken off … but humans are resourceful and inventive, and we face some really significant issues in the future.”
For the U.S., those issues include the 22-year-long “megadrought” which has left the western U.S. [emphases mine] drier than at any time in the past 1,200 years, and which is already threatening the future of some American cities.
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As important as they are, there’s more than critical minerals and water, according to Dyer’s January 16, 2025 article
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Even the “rock flour” that lies under the ice cap could have great commercial and strategic importance.
Ground into nanoparticles by the crushing weight of the ice, research has revealed it to have almost miraculous properties, says Menezes.
“Scientists have found that Greenlandic glacial flour has a particular nutrient composition that enables it to be regenerative of soil conditions elsewhere,” he told CBC News. “It improves agricultural yields. It has direct implications for food security.”
Spreading Greenland rock flour on corn fields in Ghana produced a 30 to 50 per cent increase in crop yields. Similar yield gains occurred when it was spread on Danish fields that produce the barley for Carlsberg beer.
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Canada
It’s getting a little tiring keeping up with Mr. Trump’s tariff tear (using ‘tear’ as a verbal noun; from the Cambridge dictionary, verb: TEAR definition: 1. to pull or be pulled apart, or to pull pieces off: 2. to move very quickly …).
The bottom line is that Mr. Trump wants something and certainly Canadian critical minerals and water constitute either his entire interest or, at least, his main interest for now, with more to be determined later.
Niall McGee’s February 9, 2025 article for the Globe and Mail provides an overview of the US’s dependence on Canada’s critical minerals,
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The US relies on Canada for a huge swath of its critical mineral imports, including 40 per cent of its primary nickel for its defence industry, 30 per cent of its uranium, which is used in its nuclear-power fleet, and 79 per cent of its potash for growing crops.
The US produces only small amounts of all three, while Canada is the world’s biggest potash producer, the second biggest in uranium, and number six in nickel.
If the US wants to buy fewer critical minerals from Canada, in many cases it would be forced to source them from hostile countries such as Russia and China.
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Vancouver-based Teck Resources Ltd. is one of the few North American suppliers of germanium. The critical mineral is used in fibre-optic networks, infrared vision systems, solar panels. The US relies on Canada for 23 per cent of its imports of germanium.
China in December [2024] banned exports of the critical mineral to the US citing national security concerns. The ban raised fears of possible shortages for the US.
“It’s obvious we have a lot of what Trump wants to support America’s ambitions, from both an economic and a geopolitical standpoint,” says Martin Turenne, CEO of Vancouver-based FPX Nickel Corp., which is developing a massive nickel project in British Columbia. [p. B5 paper version]
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Akshay Kulkarni’s January 15, 2025 article for CBC news online provides more details about British Columbia and its critical minerals, Note: Links have been removed,
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The premier had suggested Tuesday [January 14, 2025] that retaliatory tariffs and export bans could be part of the response, and cited a smelter operation located in Trail, B.C. [emphasis mine; keep reading], which exports minerals that Eby [Premier of British Columbia, David Eby] said are critical for the U.S.
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The U.S. and Canada both maintain lists of critical minerals — ranging from aluminum and tin to more obscure elements like ytterbium and hafnium — that both countries say are important for defence, energy production and other key areas.
Michael Goehring, the president of the Mining Association of B.C., said B.C. has access to or produces 16 of the 50 minerals considered critical by the U.S.
Individual atoms of silicon and germanium are seen following an Atomic Probe Tomography (APT) measurement at Polytechnique Montreal. Both minerals are manufactured in B.C. (Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press)
“We have 17 critical mineral projects on the horizon right now, along with a number of precious metal projects,” he told CBC News on Tuesday [January 14, 2025].
“The 17 critical mineral projects alone represent some $32 billion in potential investment for British Columbia,” he added.
John Steen, director of the Bradshaw Research Institute for Minerals and Mining at the University of B.C., pointed to germanium — which is manufactured at Teck’s facility in Trail [emphasis mine] — as one of the materials most important to U.S industry.
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There are a number of mines and manufacturing facilities across B.C. and Canada for critical minerals.
The B.C. government says the province is Canada’s largest producer of copper, and only producer of molybdenum, which are both considered critical minerals.
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There’s also graphite, not in BC but in Québec. This April 8, 2023 article by Christian Paas-Lang for CBC news online focuses largely on issues of how to access and exploit graphite and also, importantly, indigenous concerns, but this excerpt focuses on graphite as a critical mineral,
A mining project might not be what comes to mind when you think of the transition to a lower emissions economy. But embedded in electric vehicles, solar panels and hydrogen fuel storage are metals and minerals that come from mines like the one in Lac-des-Îles, Que.
The graphite mine, owned by the company Northern Graphite, is just one of many projects aimed at extracting what are now officially dubbed “critical minerals” — substances of significant strategic and economic importance to the future of national economies.
Lac-des-Îles is the only significant graphite mining project in North America, accounting for Canada’s contribution to an industry dominated by China.
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There was another proposed graphite mine in Québec, which encountered significant push back from the local Indigenous community as noted in my November 26, 2024 posting, “Local resistance to Lomiko Metals’ Outaouais graphite mine.” The posting also provides a very brief update of graphite mining in Canada.
It seems to me that water does not get the attention that it should and that’s why I lead with water in my headline. Eric Reguly’s February 9, 2025 article in the Globe and Mail highlights some of the water issues facing the US, not just Iowa,
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Water may be the real reason, or one of the top reasons, propelling his [Mr. Trump’s] desire to turn Canada into Minnesota North. Canadians represent 0.5 per cent of the globe’s population yet sit on 20% or more of its fresh water. Vast tracts of the United States routinely suffer from water shortages, which are drying up rivers – the once mighty Colorado River no longer reaches the Pacific Ocean – shrinking aquifers beneath farmland and preventing water-intensive industries from building factories. Warming average temperatures will intensify the shortages. [p. B2 in paper version]
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Reguly is more interested in the impact water shortages have on industry. He also offers a brief history of US interest in acquiring Canadian water resources dating back to the first North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that came into effect on January 1, 1994.
A March 6, 2024 article by Elia Nilsen for CNN television news online details Colorado river geography and gives you a sense of just how serious the situation is, Note: Links have been removed,
Seven Western states are starting to plot a future for how much water they’ll draw from the dwindling Colorado River in a warmer, drier world.
The river is the lifeblood for the West – providing drinking water for tens of millions, irrigating crops, and powering homes and industry with hydroelectric dams.
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This has bought states more time to figure out how to divvy up the river after 2026, when the current operating guidelines expire.
To that end, the four upper basin river states of Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming submitted their proposal for how future cuts should be divvied up among the seven states to the federal government on Tuesday [March 5, 2024], and the three lower basin states of California, Arizona and Nevada submitted their plan on Wednesday [March 6, 2024].
One thing is clear from the competing plans: The two groups of states do not agree so far on who should bear the brunt of future cuts if water levels drop in the Colorado River basin.
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As of a December 12, 2024 article by Shannon Mullane for watereducationcolorado.org, the states are still wrangling and they are not the only interested parties, Note: A link has been removed,
… officials from seven states are debating the terms of a new agreement for how to store, release and deliver Colorado River water for years to come, and they have until 2026 to finalize a plan. This month, the tone of the state negotiations soured as some state negotiators threw barbs and others called for an end to the political rhetoric and saber-rattling.
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The state negotiators are not the only players at the table: Tribal leaders, federal officials, environmental organizations, agricultural groups, cities, industrial interests and others are weighing in on the process.
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Water use from the Colorado river has international implications as this February 5, 2025 essay (Water is the other US-Mexico border crisis, and the supply crunch is getting worse) by Gabriel Eckstein, professor of law at Texas A&M University and Rosario Sanchez, senior research scientist at Texas Water Resources Institute and at Texas A&M University for The Conversation makes clear, Note: Links have been removed,
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The Colorado River provides water to more than 44 million people, including seven U.S. and two Mexican states, 29 Indian tribes and 5.5 million acres of farmland. Only about 10% of its total flow reaches Mexico. The river once emptied into the Gulf of California, but now so much water is withdrawn along its course that since the 1960s it typically peters out in the desert.
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At least 28 aquifers – underground rock formations that contain water – also traverse the border. With a few exceptions, very little information on these shared resources exists. One thing that is known is that many of them are severely overtapped and contaminated.
Nonetheless, reliance on aquifers is growing as surface water supplies dwindle. Some 80% of groundwater used in the border region goes to agriculture. The rest is used by farmers and industries, such as automotive and appliance manufacturers.
Over 10 million people in 30 cities and communities throughout the border region rely on groundwater for domestic use. Many communities, including Ciudad Juarez; the sister cities of Nogales in both Arizona and Sonora; and the sister cities of Columbus in New Mexico and Puerto Palomas in Chihuahua, get all or most of their fresh water from these aquifers.
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A booming region
About 30 million people live within 100 miles (160 kilometers) of the border on both sides. Over the next 30 years, that figure is expected to double.
Municipal and industrial water use throughout the region is also expected to increase. In Texas’ lower Rio Grande Valley, municipal use alone could more than double by 2040.
At the same time, as climate change continues to worsen, scientists project that snowmelt will decrease and evaporation rates will increase. The Colorado River’s baseflow – the portion of its volume that comes from groundwater, rather than from rain and snow – may decline by nearly 30% in the next 30 years.
Precipitation patterns across the region are projected to be uncertain and erratic for the foreseeable future. This trend will fuel more extreme weather events, such as droughts and floods, which could cause widespread harm to crops, industrial activity, human health and the environment.
Further stress comes from growth and development. Both the Colorado River and Rio Grande are tainted by pollutants from agricultural, municipal and industrial sources. Cities on both sides of the border, especially on the Mexican side, have a long history of dumping untreated sewage into the Rio Grande. Of the 55 water treatment plants located along the border, 80% reported ongoing maintenance, capacity and operating problems as of 2019.
Drought across the border region is already stoking domestic and bilateral tensions. Competing water users are struggling to meet their needs, and the U.S. and Mexico are straining to comply with treaty obligations for sharing water [emphasis mine].
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Getting back to Canada and water, Reguly’s February 9, 2025 article notes Mr. Trump’s attitude towards our water,
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Mr. Trump’s transaction-oriented brain know that water availability translates into job availability. If Canada were forced to export water by bulk to the United States, Canada would in effect be exporting jobs and America absorbing them. In the fall [2024] when he was campaigning, he called British Columbia “essentially a very large faucet” [emphasis mine] that could be used to overcome California’s permanent water deficit.
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In Canada’s favour, Canadians have been united in their opposition to bulk water exports. That sentiment is codified in the Transboundary Waters Protection Act, which bans large scale removal from waterways shared with the United States. … [p. B2 in paper version]
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It’s reassuring to read that we have some rules regarding water removal but British Columbia also has a water treaty with the US, the Columbia River Treaty, and an update to it lingers in limbo as Kirk Lapointe notes in his February 6, 2025 article for vancouverisawesome.com. Lapointe mentions shortcomings on both sides of the negotiating table for the delay in ratifying the update while expressing concern over Mr. Trump’s possible machinations should this matter cross his radar.
What about Ukraine’s critical mineral?
A February 13, 2025 article by Geoff Nixon for CBC news online provides some of the latest news on the situation between the US and the Ukraine, Note: Links have been removed,
Ukraine has clearly grabbed the attention of U.S. President Donald Trump with its apparent willingness to share access to rare-earth resources with Washington, in exchange for its continued support and security guarantees.
Trump wants what he calls “equalization” for support the U.S. has provided to Ukraine in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion. And he wants this payment in the form of Ukraine’s rare earth minerals, metals “and other things,” as the U.S. leader put it last week.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has travelled to Ukraine to discuss the proposition, which was first raised with Trump last fall [2024], telling reporters Wednesday [February 12, 2025] that he hoped a deal could be reached within days.
Bessent says such a deal could provide a “security shield” in post-war Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, meanwhile, said in his daily address that it would both strengthen Ukraine’s security and “give new momentum to our economic relations.”
But just how much trust can Kyiv put in a Trump-led White House to provide support to Ukraine, now and in the future? Ukraine may not be in a position to back away from the offer, with Trump’s interest piqued and U.S. support remaining critical for Kyiv after nearly three years of all-out war with Russia.
“I think the problem for Ukraine is that it doesn’t really have much choice,” said Oxana Shevel, an associate professor of political science at Boston’s Tufts University.
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Then there’s the issue of the Ukrainian minerals, which have to remain in Kyiv’s hands in order for the U.S. to access them — a point Zelenskyy and other Ukraine officials have underlined.
There are more than a dozen elements considered to be rare earths, and Ukraine’s Institute of Geology says those that can be found in Ukraine include lanthanum, cerium, neodymium, erbium and yttrium. EU-funded research also indicates that Ukraine has scandium reserves. But the details of the data are classified.
Rare earths are used in manufacturing magnets that turn power into motion for electric vehicles, in cellphones and other electronics, as well as for scientific and industrial applications.
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Trump has said he wants the equivalent of $500 billion US in rare earth minerals.
Yuriy Gorodnichenko, a professor of economics at the University of California, Berkeley, says any effort to develop and extract these resources won’t happen overnight and it’s unclear how plentiful they are.
“The fact is, nobody knows how much you have for sure there and what is the value of that,” he said in an interview.
“It will take years to do geological studies,” he said. “Years to build extraction facilities.”
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Just how desperate is the US?
Yes, the United States has oil but it doesn’t have much in the way of materials it needs for the new technologies and it’s running out of something very basic: water.
I don’t know how desperate the US is but Mr. Trump’s flailings suggest that the answer is very, very desperate.
Caption: Sensor printed on leaf by CO2 laser. Credit: Bruno Janegitz
A May 9, 2024 news item on phys.org announces work which makes use of fallen leaves, Note: A link has been removed,
Fabrication of sensors by 3D printing combines speed, freedom of design, and the possibility of using waste as a substrate. Various results have been obtained in a circular economy mode, whereby residues usually thrown away are instead used as low-cost resources.
A highly creative solution involving the printing of electrochemical sensors on fallen tree leaves has now been presented by a team of researchers in Brazil led by Bruno Janegitz, a professor at the Federal University of São Carlos (UFSCar) and head of its Laboratory for Sensors, Nanomedicines, and Nanostructured Materials (LSNANO), and Thiago Paixão, a professor at the University of São Paulo (USP) and head of its Electronic Tongues and Chemical Sensors Lab (L2ESQ).
The initiative was supported by FAPESP and highlighted in an article published in the journal ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering.
“We used a CO2 [carbon dioxide] laser to print the design of interest on a leaf by means of pyrolysis and carbonization. We thereby obtained an electrochemical sensor for use in determining levels of dopamine and paracetamol. It’s very easy to operate. A drop of the solution containing one of these compounds is placed on the sensor, and the potentiostat to which it’s coupled displays the concentration,” Janegitz said.
Simply put, the laser beam burns the leaf in a pyrolytic process that converts its cellulose into graphite [emphasis mine], and the graphite body is printed on the leaf in a shape suited to functioning as a sensor. During the fabrication process, the parameters of the CO2 laser, including laser power, pyrolysis scan rate and scan gap, are systematically adjusted to achieve optimal outcomes.
“The sensors were characterized by morphological and physicochemical methods, permitting exhaustive exploration of the novel carbonized surface generated on the leaves,” Janegitz said.
“Furthermore, the applicability of the sensors was confirmed by tests involving the detection of dopamine and paracetamol in biological and pharmaceutical samples. For dopamine, the system proved efficient in a linear range of 10–1,200 micromoles per liter, with a detection limit of 1.1 micromole per liter. For paracetamol, the system worked well in a linear range of 5-100 micromoles per liter, with a detection limit of 0.76.”
In the tests involving dopamine and paracetamol, conducted as proof of concept, the electrochemical sensors derived from fallen tree leaves attained a satisfactory analytical performance and noteworthy reproducibility, highlighting their potential as an alternative to conventional substrates.
Substituting fallen tree leaves for conventional materials yields significant gains in terms of cost-cutting and above all environmental sustainability. “The leaves would have been incinerated, or at best composted. Instead, they were used as a substrate for high value-added devices in a major advancement for the fabrication of next-generation electrochemical sensors,” Janegitz said.
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There’s also this, “The Agency FAPESP licenses news via Creative Commons (CC-BY-NC-ND) so that they can be republished free of charge and in a simple way by other digital or printed vehicles.”
Canada is the 10th largest (1.2%) producer of graphite in the world with China leading the way in the top spot at 68.1%. That’s right, 1.2% can get you into the top 10.
If you’re curious about which countries fill out the other eight spots, The National Research Council of Canada has a handy webpage titled, Graphite Facts,
Graphite is a non-metallic mineral that has properties similar to metals, such as a good ability to conduct heat and electricity. Graphite occurs naturally or can be produced synthetically. Purified natural graphite has higher crystalline structure and offers better electrical and thermal conductivity than synthetic material.
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Among the many applications, natural and synthetic graphite are used for electrodes, refractories, batteries and lubricants and by foundries. Coated spherical graphite is used to manufacture the anode in lithium-ion batteries. High-grade graphite is also used in fuel cells, semiconductors, LEDs and nuclear reactors.
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The Lac des Iles mine is the only mine in Canada that is producing graphite. However, many other companies are working on graphite projects.
Canada’s graphite shipments reached 11,937 tonnes in 2020, up slightly from 11,045 tonnes in 2020 [sic].
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Global production and demand for graphite are anticipated to increase in the coming years, largely because of the use of graphite in the batteries of electric vehicles. In 2020, global consumption of graphite reached 2.7 million tonnes. Synthetic graphite accounted for about two-thirds of the graphite consumption, which was largely concentrated in Asia.
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In 2020, the value of Canada’s exports of graphite was $31.6 million, a 9% decrease compared to the previous year. Imports also decreased in 2020, by 33% to $20.9 million.
Natural graphite accounted for 46.7% ($14.8 million) of the value of Canada’s exports of graphite and 13.5% ($2.8 million) of Canada’s imports of graphite in 2020. Synthetic graphite accounted for 53.3% ($ 16.9 million) of Canada’s exports of graphite and 86.5% ($18.0 million) of Canada’s imports of graphite in 2020.
In 2020, the United States was the primary destination for Canada’s exports of natural and synthetic graphite, accounting for 85% and 42% of the total exports, respectively.
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I think the writer meant that shipments were up slightly from 2019. The page was last updated on February 4, 2022.
The news from Ohio
A June 10, 2022 news item on Nanowerk about research into a new type of graphite (Note: A link has been removed),
As the world’s appetite for carbon-based materials like graphite increases, Ohio University researchers presented evidence this week for a new carbon solid they named “amorphous graphite.”
Physicist David Drabold and engineer Jason Trembly started with the question, “Can we make graphite from coal?”
“Graphite is an important carbon material with many uses. A burgeoning application for graphite is for battery anodes in lithium-ion batteries, and it is crucial for the electric vehicle industry — a Tesla Model S on average needs 54 kg of graphite. Such electrodes are best if made with pure carbon materials, which are becoming more difficult to obtain owing to spiraling technological demand,” they write in their paper that published in Physical Review Letters (“Ab initio simulation of amorphous graphite”).
Ab initio means from the beginning, and their work pursues novel paths to synthetic forms of graphite from naturally occurring carbonaceous material. What they found, with several different calculations, was a layered material that forms at very high temperatures (about 3000 degrees Kelvin). Its layers stay together due to the formation of an electron gas between the layers, but they’re not the perfect layers of hexagons that make up ideal graphene. This new material has plenty of hexagons, but also pentagons and heptagons. That ring disorder reduces the electrical conductivity of the new material compared with graphene, but the conductivity is still high in the regions dominated largely by hexagons.
“In chemistry, the process of converting carbonaceous materials to a layered graphitic structure by thermal treatment at high temperature is called graphitization. In this letter, we show from ab initio and machine learning molecular dynamic simulations that pure carbon networks have an overwhelming proclivity to convert to a layered structure in a significant density and temperature window with the layering occurring even for random starting configurations. The flat layers are amorphous graphene: topologically disordered three-coordinated carbon atoms arranged in planes with pentagons, hexagons and heptagons of carbon,” said Drabold, Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy in the College of Arts and Sciences at Ohio University.
“Since this phase is topologically disordered, the usual ‘stacking registry’ of graphite is only statistically respected,” Drabold said. “The layering is observed without Van der Waals corrections to density functional (LDA and PBE) forces, and we discuss the formation of a delocalized electron gas in the galleries (voids between planes) and show that interplane cohesion is partly due to this low-density electron gas. The in-plane electronic conductivity is dramatically reduced relative to graphene.”
The researchers expect their announcement to spur experimentation and studies addressing the existence of amorphous graphite, which may be testable from exfoliation and/or experimental surface structural probes.
Trembly, Russ Professor of Mechanical Engineering and director of the Institute for Sustainable Energy and the Environment in the Russ College of Engineering and Technology at Ohio University, has been working in part on green uses of coal. He and Drabold — along with physics doctoral students Rajendra Thapa, Chinonso Ugwumadu and Kishor Nepal — collaborated on the research. Drabold also is part of the Nanoscale & Quantum Phenomena Institute at OHIO, and he has published a series of papers on the theory of amorphous carbon and amorphous graphene. Drabold also emphasized the excellent work of his graduate students in carrying out this research.
Surprising interplane cohesion
“The question that led us to this is whether we could make graphite from coal,” Drabold said. “This paper does not fully answer that question, but it shows that carbon has an overwhelming tendency to layer — like graphite, but with many ‘defects’ such as pentagons and heptagons (five- and seven-member rings of carbon atoms), which fit quite naturally into the network. We present evidence that amorphous graphite exists, and we describe its process of formation. It has been suspected from experiments that graphitization occurs near 3,000K, but the details of the formation process and nature of disorder in the planes was unknown,” he added.
The Ohio University researchers’ work is also a prediction of a new phase of carbon.
“Until we did this, it was not at all obvious that layers of amorphous graphene (the planes including pentagons and heptagons) would stick together in a layered structure. I find that quite surprising, and it is likely that experimentalists will go hunting for this stuff now that its existence is predicted,” Drabold said. “Carbon is the miracle element — you can make life, diamond, graphite, Bucky Balls, nanotubes, graphene, [emphasis mine] and now this. There is a lot of interesting basic physics in this, too — for example how and why the planes bind, this by itself is quite surprising for technical reasons.”
A July 25, 2011 posting marks the earliest appearance of graphite on this blog. Titled, “Canadians as hewers of graphite?” It featured Northern Graphite Corporation, which today (June 21, 2022) is the largest North American graphite producer according to the company’s homepage,
Northern owns the Lac des Iles (LDI) mine in Quebec, the only significant graphite producer in North America. Northern plans to increase production and extend the mine life.
Northern is currently upgrading its Okorusu processing plant in Namibia. It will be back on line in 1H 2023 and make Northern the third largest non Chinese graphite producer.
Northern plans to develop its advanced stage Bissett Creek project in Ontario which has a full Feasibility Study. It has been rated as the highest margin graphite deposit in the world.
The Okanjande deposit in Namibia has a very large measured and indicated resource. Northern intends to study building a 150,000tpa plant to supply battery markets in Europe.
I notice the involvement in Namibia. I hope this is a ‘good’ mining company. Canadian mining companies have been known to breach human rights and environmental regulations when operating internationally. There’s a recent tragedy described in this June 20, 2020 news article on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) online news site (Note: A link has been removed),
Trevali Mining Corp. says it has recovered the bodies of the final two of eight workers killed after its Perkoa Mine in Burkina Faso flooded following heavy rainfall on Apr. 16 [2022].
The bodies of the other six workers were recovered by search teams late last month.
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The Vancouver-based zinc miner says it is working alongside Burkinabe authorities to coordinate the dewatering and rehabilitation of the mine.
The flooding event is under investigation by the company and government authorities.
MiningWatch Canada, an Ottawa-based industry watchdog, has questioned how well the company was prepared for disaster and criticized the federal government’s lack of regulations on how Canadian mining companies operate internationally. [emphasis mine]
They say tighter rules are necessary for companies operating abroad.
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A May 10, 2022 article by Amanda Follett Hosgood about the disaster for The Tyee provides more details and asks some very pertinent and uncomfortable questions. (Yes, The Tyee is a very ‘left wing’ journalistic effort and they have a point where Canadian mining companies are concerned.)
Northern Graphite is committed to conducting its activities in a manner that meets best international industry practices regardless of the country or location of operation. The Company will operate with the highest standards of honesty, integrity, and ethical behaviour. It will conduct its business in a manner that meets or exceeds all applicable laws, rules, and regulations and meets its social and moral obligations. This policy applies to all Board members, officers and other employees, contractors, and other third parties working on behalf of or representing the Company.
Taking all reasonable precautions to ensure the health and safety of workers and others affected by the Company’s operations.
Managing and minimizing the environmental impact of the Company’s operations by following best international practices and standards and meeting stakeholder expectations while recognizing that mining will always have some unavoidable impacts on the environment.
Utilizing practices and technologies that minimize the Company’s water and carbon footprints.
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Respecting the rights, culture and development of local and Indigenous communities.
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The elimination of fraud, bribery, and corruption.
The protection and respect of human rights.
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Providing an adequate return to shareholders and investors while ensuring that all stakeholders benefit from the extraction of the earth’s resources through fair labour and compensation practices, local hiring and contracting, community support, and the payment of all applicable government taxes and royalties.
There are two other Canadian mining companies (that I know of) in pursuit of graphite, Lomiko Metals (British Columbia) and Focus Graphite (Ontario). All the mines in Canada, whether they are producing or not, are in either Québec or Ontario.
As for the research team in Ohio, congratulations on your very exciting work!
For a change this October 19, 2021 item on phys.org isn’t highlighting a single research paper so much as it provides a history of graphene and context for research being done at the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) at the University of Maryland (US),
Carbon is not the shiniest element, nor the most reactive, nor the rarest. But it is one of the most versatile.
Carbon is the backbone of life on earth and the fossil fuels that have resulted from the demise of ancient life. Carbon is the essential ingredient for turning iron into steel, which underlies technologies from medieval swords to skyscrapers and submarines. And strong, lightweight carbon fibers are used in cars, planes and windmills. Even just carbon on its own is extraordinarily adaptable: It is the only ingredient in (among other things) diamonds, buckyballs and graphite (the stuff used to make pencil lead).
This last form, graphite, is at first glance the most mundane, but thin sheets of it host a wealth of uncommon physics. Research into individual atom-thick sheets of graphite—called graphene—took off after 2004 when scientists developed a reliable way to produce it (using everyday adhesive tape to repeatedly peel layers apart). In 2010 early experiments demonstrating the quantum richness of graphene earned two researchers the Nobel Prize in physics.
In recent years, graphene has kept on giving. Researchers have discovered that stacking layers of graphene two or three at a time (called, respectively, bilayer graphene or trilayer graphene) and twisting the layers relative to each other opens fertile new territory for scientists to explore. Research into these stacked sheets of graphene is like the Wild West, complete with the lure of striking gold and the uncertainty of uncharted territory.
Researchers at JQI and the Condensed Matter Theory Center (CMTC) at the University of Maryland, including JQI Fellows Sankar Das Sarma and Jay Sau and others, are busy creating the theoretical physics foundation that will be a map of this new landscape. And there is a lot to map; the phenomena in graphene range from the familiar like magnetism to more exotic things like strange metallicity, different versions of the quantum Hall effect, and the Pomeranchuk effect—each of which involve electrons coordinating to produce unique behaviors. One of the most promising veins for scientific treasure is the appearance of superconductivity (lossless electrical flow) in stacked graphene.
“Here is a system where almost every interesting quantum phase of matter that theorists ever could imagine shows up in a single system as the twist angle, carrier density, and temperature are tuned in a single sample in a single experiment,” says Das Sarma, who is also the Director of the CMTC. “Sounds like magic or science fantasy, except it is happening every day in at least ten laboratories in the world.”
The richness and diversity of the electrical behaviors in graphene stacks has inspired a stampede of research. The 2021 American Physical Society March Meeting included 13 sessions addressing the topics of graphene or twisted bilayers, and Das Sarma hosted a day long virtual conference in June for researchers to discuss twisted graphene and the related research inspired by the topic. The topic of stacked graphene is extensively represented in scientific journals, and the online arXiv preprint server has over 2,000 articles posted about “bilayer graphene”—nearly 1,000 since 2018.
Perhaps surprisingly, graphene’s wealth of quantum research opportunities is tied to its physical simplicity.
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An October 18, 2021 JQI news release by Bailey Bedford, which originated the news item, explains why researchers have described a twist found in graphene as ‘magic’,
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Researchers have discovered that at a special, small twist angle (about 1.1 degrees)—whimsically named the “magic angle”—the environment is just right to create strong interactions that radically change its properties. When that precise angle is reached, the electrons tend to cluster around certain areas of the graphene, and new electrical behaviors suddenly appear as if summoned with a dramatic magician’s flourish. Magic angle graphene behaves as a poorly-conducting insulator in some circumstances and in other cases goes to the opposite extreme of being a superconductor—a material that transports electricity without any loss of energy.
The discovery of magic-angle graphene and that it has certain quantum behaviors similar to a high-temperature superconductor was the Physics World 2018 Breakthrough of the Year. Superconductors have many valuable potential uses, like revolutionizing energy infrastructure and making efficient maglev trains. Finding a convenient, room-temperature superconductor has been a holy grail for scientists.
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I haven’t done to justice to this piece and, so, for anyone interested in graphene, superconductors, and electronics I recommend reading the piece (October 18, 2021 JQI news release by Bailey Bedford) in its entirety where you’ll also find references to these articles and more,
A July 10, 2019 news item on ScienceDaily announces a more environmentally friendly way to produce graphene leading to more environmentally friendly devices such as computers,
In order to create new and more efficient computers, medical devices, and other advanced technologies, researchers are turning to nanomaterials: materials manipulated on the scale of atoms or molecules that exhibit unique properties.
Graphene — a flake of carbon as thin as a single later of atoms — is a revolutionary nanomaterial due to its ability to easily conduct electricity, as well as its extraordinary mechanical strength and flexibility. However, a major hurdle in adopting it for everyday applications is producing graphene at a large scale, while still retaining its amazing properties.
In a paper published in the journal ChemOpen, Anne S. Meyer, an associate professor of biology at the University of Rochester [New York state, US], and her colleagues at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, describe a way to overcome this barrier. The researchers outline their method to produce graphene materials using a novel technique: mixing oxidized graphite with bacteria. Their method is a more cost-efficient, time-saving, and environmentally friendly way of producing graphene materials versus those produced chemically, and could lead to the creation of innovative computer technologies and medical equipment.
Graphene is extracted from graphite, the material found in an ordinary pencil. At exactly one atom thick, graphene is the thinnest–yet strongest–two-dimensional material known to researchers. Scientists from the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom were awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery of graphene; however, their method of using sticky tape to make graphene yielded only small amounts of the material.
“For real applications you need large amounts,” Meyer says. “Producing these bulk amounts is challenging and typically results in graphene that is thicker and less pure. This is where our work came in.”
In order to produce larger quantities of graphene materials, Meyer and her colleagues started with a vial of graphite. They exfoliated the graphite–shedding the layers of material–to produce graphene oxide (GO), which they then mixed with the bacteria Shewanella. They let the beaker of bacteria and precursor materials sit overnight, during which time the bacteria reduced the GO to a graphene material.
“Graphene oxide is easy to produce, but it is not very conductive due to all of the oxygen groups in it,” Meyer says. “The bacteria remove most of the oxygen groups, which turns it into a conductive material.”
While the bacterially-produced graphene material created in Meyer’s lab is conductive, it is also thinner and more stable than graphene produced chemically. It can additionally be stored for longer periods of time, making it well suited for a variety of applications, including field-effect transistor (FET) biosensors and conducting ink. FET biosensors are devices that detect biological molecules and could be used to perform, for example, real-time glucose monitoring for diabetics.
“When biological molecules bind to the device, they change the conductance of the surface, sending a signal that the molecule is present,” Meyer says. “To make a good FET biosensor you want a material that is highly conductive but can also be modified to bind to specific molecules.” Graphene oxide that has been reduced is an ideal material because it is lightweight and very conductive, but it typically retains a small number of oxygen groups that can be used to bind to the molecules of interest.
The bacterially produced graphene material could also be the basis for conductive inks, which could, in turn, be used to make faster and more efficient computer keyboards, circuit boards, or small wires such as those used to defrost car windshields. Using conductive inks is an “easier, more economical way to produce electrical circuits, compared to traditional techniques,” Meyer says. Conductive inks could also be used to produce electrical circuits on top of nontraditional materials like fabric or paper.
“Our bacterially produced graphene material will lead to far better suitability for product development,” Meyer says. “We were even able to develop a technique of ‘bacterial lithography’ to create graphene materials that were only conductive on one side, which can lead to the development of new, advanced nanocomposite materials.”
Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,
Creation of Conductive Graphene Materials by Bacterial Reduction Using Shewanella Oneidensis by Benjamin A. E. Lehner, Vera A. E. C. Janssen, Dr. Ewa M. Spiesz, Dominik Benz, Dr. Stan J. J. Brouns, Dr. Anne S. Meyer, Prof. Dr. Herre S. J. van der Zant. ChemistryOpen Volume 8, Issue 7 July 2019 Pages 888-895 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/open.201900186 First published: 04 July 2019
As you would expect given the journal’s title, this paper is open access.
Michael Berger’s October 9, 2018 Nanowerk Spotlight article about graphene brings to light a problem, which in hindsight seems obvious, fake graphene (Note: Links have been removed),
Peter Bøggild over at DTU [Technical University of Denmark] just published an interesting opinion piece in Nature titled “The war on fake graphene”.
The piece refers to a paper published in Advanced Materials (“The Worldwide Graphene Flake Production”) that studied graphene purchased from 60 producers around the world.
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The study’s [“The Worldwide Graphene Flake Production”] findings show unequivocally “that the quality of the graphene produced in the world today is rather poor, not optimal for most applications, and most companies are producing graphite microplatelets. This is possibly the main reason for the slow development of graphene applications, which usually require a customized solution in terms of graphene properties.”
A conclusion that sounds even more damming is that “our extensive studies of graphene production worldwide indicate that there is almost no high quality graphene, as defined by ISO [International Organization for Standardization], in the market yet.”
The team also points out that a large number of the samples on the market labelled as graphene are actually graphene oxide and reduced graphene oxide. Furthermore, carbon content analysis shows that in many cases there is substantial contamination of the samples and a large number of companies produce material a with low carbon content. Contamination has many possible sources but most likely, it arises from the chemicals used in the processes.
Graphite is composed of layers of carbon atoms just a single atom in thickness, known as graphene sheets, to which it owes many of its remarkable properties. When the thickness of graphite flakes is reduced to just a few graphene layers, some of the material’s technologically most important characteristics are greatly enhanced — such as the total surface area per gram, and the mechanical flexibility of the individual flakes. In other words, graphene is more than just thin graphite. Unfortunately, it seems that many graphene producers either do not know or do not care about this. …
Imagine a world in which antibiotics could be sold by anybody, and were not subject to quality standards and regulations. Many people would be afraid to use them because of the potential side effects, or because they had no faith that they would work, with potentially fatal consequences. For emerging nanomaterials such as graphene, a lack of standards is creating a situation that, although not deadly, is similarly unacceptable.
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It seems that the high-profile scientific discoveries, technical breakthroughs and heavy investment in graphene have created a Wild West for business opportunists: the study shows that some producers are labelling black powders that mostly contain cheap graphite as graphene, and selling them for top dollar. The problem is exacerbated because the entry barrier to becoming a graphene provider is exceptionally low — anyone can buy bulk graphite, grind it to powder and make a website to sell it on.
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Nevertheless, the work [“The Worldwide Graphene Flake Production”] is a timely and ambitious example of the rigorous mindset needed to make rapid progress, not just in graphene research, but in work on any nanomaterial entering the market. To put it bluntly, there can be no quality without quality control.
Here are links to and citations for the study providing the basis for both Berger’s Spotlight article and Bøggild’s opinion piece,
The Worldwide Graphene Flake Production by Alan P. Kauling, Andressa T. Seefeldt, Diego P. Pisoni, Roshini C. Pradeep, Ricardo Bentini, Ricardo V. B. Oliveira, Konstantin S. Novoselov [emphasis mine], Antonio H. Castro Neto. Advanced Materials Volume 30, Issue 44 November 2, 2018 1803784 https://doi.org/10.1002/adma.201803784
The study which includes Konstantin Novoselov, a Nobel prize winner for his and Andre Geim’s work at the University of Manchester where they first isolated graphene, is behind a paywall.
In August 2018, I been stumbled across several stories about graphene-based products and a new form of carbon.
Graphene jacket
The company producing this jacket has as its goal “… creating bionic clothing that is both bulletproof and intelligent.” Well, ‘bionic‘ means biologically-inspired engineering and ‘intelligent‘ usually means there’s some kind of computing capability in the product. This jacket, which is the first step towards the company’s goal, is not bionic, bulletproof, or intelligent. Nonetheless, it represents a very interesting science experiment in which you, the consumer, are part of step two in the company’s R&D (research and development).
Graphene is the thinnest possible form of graphite, which you can find in your everyday pencil. It’s purely bi-dimensional, a single layer of carbon atoms that has unbelievable properties that have long threatened to revolutionize everything from aerospace engineering to medicine. …
Despite its immense promise, graphene still hasn’t found much use in consumer products, thanks to the fact that it’s hard to manipulate and manufacture in industrial quantities. The process of developing Vollebak’s jacket, according to the company’s cofounders, brothers Steve and Nick Tidball, took years of intensive research, during which the company worked with the same material scientists who built Michael Phelps’ 2008 Olympic Speedo swimsuit (which was famously banned for shattering records at the event).
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The jacket is made out of a two-sided material, which the company invented during the extensive R&D process. The graphene side looks gunmetal gray, while the flipside appears matte black. To create it, the scientists turned raw graphite into something called graphene “nanoplatelets,” which are stacks of graphene that were then blended with polyurethane to create a membrane. That, in turn, is bonded to nylon to form the other side of the material, which Vollebak says alters the properties of the nylon itself. “Adding graphene to the nylon fundamentally changes its mechanical and chemical properties–a nylon fabric that couldn’t naturally conduct heat or energy, for instance, now can,” the company claims.
The company says that it’s reversible so you can enjoy graphene’s properties in different ways as the material interacts with either your skin or the world around you. “As physicists at the Max Planck Institute revealed, graphene challenges the fundamental laws of heat conduction, which means your jacket will not only conduct the heat from your body around itself to equalize your skin temperature and increase it, but the jacket can also theoretically store an unlimited amount of heat, which means it can work like a radiator,” Tidball explains.
He means it literally. You can leave the jacket out in the sun, or on another source of warmth, as it absorbs heat. Then, the company explains on its website, “If you then turn it inside out and wear the graphene next to your skin, it acts like a radiator, retaining its heat and spreading it around your body. The effect can be visibly demonstrated by placing your hand on the fabric, taking it away and then shooting the jacket with a thermal imaging camera. The heat of the handprint stays long after the hand has left.”
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There’s a lot more to the article although it does feature some hype and I’m not sure I believe Diaz’s claim (August 14, 2018 article) that ‘graphene-based’ hair dye is perfectly safe ( Note: A link has been removed),
Graphene is the thinnest possible form of graphite, which you can find in your everyday pencil. It’s purely bi-dimensional, a single layer of carbon atoms that has unbelievable properties that will one day revolutionize everything from aerospace engineering to medicine. Its diverse uses are seemingly endless: It can stop a bullet if you add enough layers. It can change the color of your hair with no adverse effects. [emphasis mine] It can turn the walls of your home into a giant fire detector. “It’s so strong and so stretchy that the fibers of a spider web coated in graphene could catch a falling plane,” as Vollebak puts it in its marketing materials.
Not unless things have changed greatly since March 2018. My August 2, 2018 posting featured the graphene-based hair dye announcement from March 2018 and a cautionary note from Dr. Andrew Maynard (scroll down ab out 50% of the way for a longer excerpt of Maynard’s comments),
Northwestern University’s press release proudly announced, “Graphene finds new application as nontoxic, anti-static hair dye.” The announcement spawned headlines like “Enough with the toxic hair dyes. We could use graphene instead,” and “’Miracle material’ graphene used to create the ultimate hair dye.”
From these headlines, you might be forgiven for getting the idea that the safety of graphene-based hair dyes is a done deal. Yet having studied the potential health and environmental impacts of engineered nanomaterials for more years than I care to remember, I find such overly optimistic pronouncements worrying – especially when they’re not backed up by clear evidence.
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These studies need to be approached with care, as the precise risks of graphene exposure will depend on how the material is used, how exposure occurs and how much of it is encountered. Yet there’s sufficient evidence to suggest that this substance should be used with caution – especially where there’s a high chance of exposure or that it could be released into the environment.
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The full text of Dr. Maynard’s comments about graphene hair dyes and risk can be found here.
Bearing in mind that graphene-based hair dye is an entirely different class of product from the jacket, I wouldn’t necessarily dismiss risks; I would like to know what kind of risk assessment and safety testing has been done. Due to their understandable enthusiasm, the brothers Tidball have focused all their marketing on the benefits and the opportunity for the consumer to test their product (from graphene jacket product webpage),
While it’s completely invisible and only a single atom thick, graphene is the lightest, strongest, most conductive material ever discovered, and has the same potential to change life on Earth as stone, bronze and iron once did. But it remains difficult to work with, extremely expensive to produce at scale, and lives mostly in pioneering research labs. So following in the footsteps of the scientists who discovered it through their own highly speculative experiments, we’re releasing graphene-coated jackets into the world as experimental prototypes. Our aim is to open up our R&D and accelerate discovery by getting graphene out of the lab and into the field so that we can harness the collective power of early adopters as a test group. No-one yet knows the true limits of what graphene can do, so the first edition of the Graphene Jacket is fully reversible with one side coated in graphene and the other side not. If you’d like to take part in the next stage of this supermaterial’s history, the experiment is now open. You can now buy it, test it and tell us about it. [emphasis mine]
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How maverick experiments won the Nobel Prize
While graphene’s existence was first theorised in the 1940s, it wasn’t until 2004 that two maverick scientists, Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, were able to isolate and test it. Through highly speculative and unfunded experimentation known as their ‘Friday night experiments,’ they peeled layer after layer off a shaving of graphite using Scotch tape until they produced a sample of graphene just one atom thick. After similarly leftfield thinking won Geim the 2000 Ig Nobel prize for levitating frogs using magnets, the pair won the Nobel prize in 2010 for the isolation of graphene.
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Should you be interested, in beta-testing the jacket, it will cost you $695 (presumably USD); order here. One last thing, Vollebak is based in the UK.
Haydale, (AIM: HAYD), the global advanced materials group, notes the announcement made yesterday from the University of Central Lancashire (UCLAN) about the recent unveiling of the world’s first graphene skinned plane at the internationally renowned Farnborough air show.
The prepreg material, developed by Haydale, has potential value for fuselage and wing surfaces in larger scale aero and space applications especially for the rapidly expanding drone market and, in the longer term, the commercial aerospace sector. By incorporating functionalised nanoparticles into epoxy resins, the electrical conductivity of fibre-reinforced composites has been significantly improved for lightning-strike protection, thereby achieving substantial weight saving and removing some manufacturing complexities.
Pre-preg is “pre-impregnated” composite fibers where a thermoset polymer matrix material, such as epoxy, or a thermoplastic resin is already present. The fibers often take the form of a weave and the matrix is used to bond them together and to other components during manufacture.
Haydale has supplied graphene enhanced prepreg material for Juno, a three-metre wide graphene-enhanced composite skinned aircraft, that was revealed as part of the ‘Futures Day’ at Farnborough Air Show 2018. [downloaded from https://www.azonano.com/news.aspx?newsID=36298]
The University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) has unveiled the world’s first graphene skinned plane at an internationally renowned air show.
Juno, a three-and-a-half-metre wide graphene skinned aircraft, was revealed on the North West Aerospace Alliance (NWAA) stand as part of the ‘Futures Day’ at Farnborough Air Show 2018.
The University’s aerospace engineering team has worked in partnership with the Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC), the University of Manchester’s National Graphene Institute (NGI), Haydale Graphene Industries (Haydale) and a range of other businesses to develop the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), which also includes graphene batteries and 3D printed parts.
Billy Beggs, UCLan’s Engineering Innovation Manager, said: “The industry reaction to Juno at Farnborough was superb with many positive comments about the work we’re doing. Having Juno at one the world’s biggest air shows demonstrates the great strides we’re making in leading a programme to accelerate the uptake of graphene and other nano-materials into industry.
“The programme supports the objectives of the UK Industrial Strategy and the University’s Engineering Innovation Centre (EIC) to increase industry relevant research and applications linked to key local specialisms. Given that Lancashire represents the fourth largest aerospace cluster in the world, there is perhaps no better place to be developing next generation technologies for the UK aerospace industry.”
Previous graphene developments at UCLan have included the world’s first flight of a graphene skinned wing and the launch of a specially designed graphene-enhanced capsule into near space using high altitude balloons.
UCLan engineering students have been involved in the hands-on project, helping build Juno on the Preston Campus.
Haydale supplied much of the material and all the graphene used in the aircraft. Ray Gibbs, Chief Executive Officer, said: “We are delighted to be part of the project team. Juno has highlighted the capability and benefit of using graphene to meet key issues faced by the market, such as reducing weight to increase range and payload, defeating lightning strike and protecting aircraft skins against ice build-up.”
David Bailey Chief Executive of the North West Aerospace Alliance added: “The North West aerospace cluster contributes over £7 billion to the UK economy, accounting for one quarter of the UK aerospace turnover. It is essential that the sector continues to develop next generation technologies so that it can help the UK retain its competitive advantage. It has been a pleasure to support the Engineering Innovation Centre team at the University in developing the world’s first full graphene skinned aircraft.”
The Juno project team represents the latest phase in a long-term strategic partnership between the University and a range of organisations. The partnership is expected to go from strength to strength following the opening of the £32m EIC facility in February 2019.
The next step is to fly Juno and conduct further tests over the next two months.
Next item, a new carbon material.
Schwarzite
I love watching this gif of a schwarzite,
The three-dimensional cage structure of a schwarzite that was formed inside the pores of a zeolite. (Graphics by Yongjin Lee and Efrem Braun)
The discovery of buckyballs [also known as fullerenes, C60, or buckminsterfullerenes] surprised and delighted chemists in the 1980s, nanotubes jazzed physicists in the 1990s, and graphene charged up materials scientists in the 2000s, but one nanoscale carbon structure – a negatively curved surface called a schwarzite – has eluded everyone. Until now.
University of California, Berkeley [UC Berkeley], chemists have proved that three carbon structures recently created by scientists in South Korea and Japan are in fact the long-sought schwarzites, which researchers predict will have unique electrical and storage properties like those now being discovered in buckminsterfullerenes (buckyballs or fullerenes for short), nanotubes and graphene.
An August 13, 2018 UC Berkeley news release by Robert Sanders, which originated the news item, describes how the Berkeley scientists and the members of their international collaboration from Germany, Switzerland, Russia, and Italy, have contributed to the current state of schwarzite research,
The new structures were built inside the pores of zeolites, crystalline forms of silicon dioxide – sand – more commonly used as water softeners in laundry detergents and to catalytically crack petroleum into gasoline. Called zeolite-templated carbons (ZTC), the structures were being investigated for possible interesting properties, though the creators were unaware of their identity as schwarzites, which theoretical chemists have worked on for decades.
Based on this theoretical work, chemists predict that schwarzites will have unique electronic, magnetic and optical properties that would make them useful as supercapacitors, battery electrodes and catalysts, and with large internal spaces ideal for gas storage and separation.
UC Berkeley postdoctoral fellow Efrem Braun and his colleagues identified these ZTC materials as schwarzites based of their negative curvature, and developed a way to predict which zeolites can be used to make schwarzites and which can’t.
“We now have the recipe for how to make these structures, which is important because, if we can make them, we can explore their behavior, which we are working hard to do now,” said Berend Smit, an adjunct professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at UC Berkeley and an expert on porous materials such as zeolites and metal-organic frameworks.
Smit, the paper’s corresponding author, Braun and their colleagues in Switzerland, China, Germany, Italy and Russia will report their discovery this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Smit is also a faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Playing with carbon
Diamond and graphite are well-known three-dimensional crystalline arrangements of pure carbon, but carbon atoms can also form two-dimensional “crystals” — hexagonal arrangements patterned like chicken wire. Graphene is one such arrangement: a flat sheet of carbon atoms that is not only the strongest material on Earth, but also has a high electrical conductivity that makes it a promising component of electronic devices.
The cage structure of a schwarzite that was formed inside the pores of a zeolite. The zeolite is subsequently dissolved to release the new material. (Graphics by Yongjin Lee and Efrem Braun)
Graphene sheets can be wadded up to form soccer ball-shaped fullerenes – spherical carbon cages that can store molecules and are being used today to deliver drugs and genes into the body. Rolling graphene into a cylinder yields fullerenes called nanotubes, which are being explored today as highly conductive wires in electronics and storage vessels for gases like hydrogen and carbon dioxide. All of these are submicroscopic, 10,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair.
To date, however, only positively curved fullerenes and graphene, which has zero curvature, have been synthesized, feats rewarded by Nobel Prizes in 1996 and 2010, respectively.
In the 1880s, German physicist Hermann Schwarz investigated negatively curved structures that resemble soap-bubble surfaces, and when theoretical work on carbon cage molecules ramped up in the 1990s, Schwarz’s name became attached to the hypothetical negatively curved carbon sheets.
“The experimental validation of schwarzites thus completes the triumvirate of possible curvatures to graphene; positively curved, flat, and now negatively curved,” Braun added.
Minimize me
Like soap bubbles on wire frames, schwarzites are topologically minimal surfaces. When made inside a zeolite, a vapor of carbon-containing molecules is injected, allowing the carbon to assemble into a two-dimensional graphene-like sheet lining the walls of the pores in the zeolite. The surface is stretched tautly to minimize its area, which makes all the surfaces curve negatively, like a saddle. The zeolite is then dissolved, leaving behind the schwarzite.
A computer-rendered negatively curved soap bubble that exhibits the geometry of a carbon schwarzite. (Felix Knöppel image)
“These negatively-curved carbons have been very hard to synthesize on their own, but it turns out that you can grow the carbon film catalytically at the surface of a zeolite,” Braun said. “But the schwarzites synthesized to date have been made by choosing zeolite templates through trial and error. We provide very simple instructions you can follow to rationally make schwarzites and we show that, by choosing the right zeolite, you can tune schwarzites to optimize the properties you want.”
Researchers should be able to pack unusually large amounts of electrical charge into schwarzites, which would make them better capacitors than conventional ones used today in electronics. Their large interior volume would also allow storage of atoms and molecules, which is also being explored with fullerenes and nanotubes. And their large surface area, equivalent to the surface areas of the zeolites they’re grown in, could make them as versatile as zeolites for catalyzing reactions in the petroleum and natural gas industries.
Braun modeled ZTC structures computationally using the known structures of zeolites, and worked with topological mathematician Senja Barthel of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Sion, Switzerland, to determine which of the minimal surfaces the structures resembled.
The team determined that, of the approximately 200 zeolites created to date, only 15 can be used as a template to make schwarzites, and only three of them have been used to date to produce schwarzite ZTCs. Over a million zeolite structures have been predicted, however, so there could be many more possible schwarzite carbon structures made using the zeolite-templating method.
Other co-authors of the paper are Yongjin Lee, Seyed Mohamad Moosavi and Barthel of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Rocio Mercado of UC Berkeley, Igor Baburin of the Technische Universität Dresden in Germany and Davide Proserpio of the Università degli Studi di Milano in Italy and Samara State Technical University in Russia.
Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,
Generating carbon schwarzites via zeolite-templating by Efrem Braun, Yongjin Lee, Seyed Mohamad Moosavi, Senja Barthel, Rocio Mercado, Igor A. Baburin, Davide M. Proserpio, and Berend Smit. PNAS August 14, 2018. 201805062; published ahead of print August 14, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1805062115
Regardless of what these shoes are called, they contain, apparently, some graphene. As to why you as a consumer might find that important, here’s more from a June 20, 2018 news item on Nanowerk,
The world’s first-ever sports shoes to utilise graphene – the strongest material on the planet – have been unveiled by The University of Manchester and British brand inov-8.
Collaborating with graphene experts at National Graphene Institute, the brand has been able to develop a graphene-enhanced rubber. They have developed rubber outsoles for running and fitness shoes that in testing have outlasted 1,000 miles and are scientifically proven to be 50% harder wearing.
The National Graphene Institute (located at the UK’s University of Manchester) June 20, 2018 press release, which originated the news item, provides a few details, none of them particularly technical or scientific, no mention of studies, etc. (Note: Links have been removed),
Graphene is 200 times stronger than steel and at only a single atom thick it is the thinnest possible material, meaning it has many unique properties. inov-8 is the first brand in the world to use the superlative material in sports footwear, with its G-SERIES shoes available to pre-order from June 22nd [2018] ahead of going on sale from July 12th [2018].
The company first announced its intent to revolutionise the sports footwear industry in December last year. Six months of frenzied anticipation later, inov-8 has now removed all secrecy and let the world see these game-changing shoes.
Michael Price, inov-8 product and marketing director, said: “Over the last 18 months we have worked with the National Graphene Institute at The University of Manchester to bring the world’s toughest grip to the sports footwear market.
“Prior to this innovation, off-road runners and fitness athletes had to choose between a sticky rubber that works well in wet or sweaty conditions but wears down quicker and a harder rubber that is more durable but not quite as grippy. Through intensive research, hundreds of prototypes and thousands of hours of testing in both the field and laboratory, athletes now no longer need to compromise.”
Dr Aravind Vijayaraghavan, Reader in Nanomaterials at The University of Manchester, said: “Using graphene we have developed G-SERIES outsole rubbers that are scientifically tested to be 50% stronger, 50% more elastic and 50% harder wearing.
“We are delighted to put graphene on the shelves of 250 retail stores all over the world and make it accessible to everyone. Graphene is a versatile material with limitless potential and in coming years we expect to deliver graphene technologies in composites, coatings and sensors, many of which will further revolutionise sports products.”
The G-SERIES range is made up of three different shoes, each meticulously designed to meet the needs of athletes. THE MUDCLAW G 260 is for running over muddy mountains and obstacle courses, the TERRAULTRA G 260 for running long distances on hard-packed trails and the F-LITE G 290 for crossfitters working out in gyms. Each includes graphene-enhanced rubber outsoles and Kevlar – a material used in bulletproof vests – on the uppers.
Commenting on the patent-pending technology and the collaboration with The University of Manchester, inov-8 CEO Ian Bailey said: “This powerhouse forged in Northern England is going to take the world of sports footwear by storm. We’re combining science and innovation together with entrepreneurial speed and agility to go up against the major sports brands – and we’re going to win.
“We are at the forefront of a graphene sports footwear revolution and we’re not stopping at just rubber outsoles. This is a four-year innovation project which will see us incorporate graphene into 50% of our range and give us the potential to halve the weight of running/fitness shoes without compromising on performance or durability.”
Graphene is produced from graphite, which was first mined in the Lake District fells of Northern England more than 450 years ago. inov-8 too was forged in the same fells, albeit much more recently in 2003. The brand now trades in 68 countries worldwide.
The scientists who first isolated graphene from graphite were awarded the Nobel Prize in 2010. Building on their revolutionary work, a team of over 300 staff at The University of Manchester has pioneered projects into graphene-enhanced prototypes, from sports cars and medical devices to aeroplanes. Now the University can add graphene-enhanced sports footwear to its list of world-firsts.
…
A picture of the ‘shoes’ has been provided,
Courtesy: National Graphene Institute at University of Manchester
You can find the company inov-8 here. As for more information about their graphene-enhanced show, there’s this,from the company’s ‘graphene webpage‘,
1555Graphite was first mined in the Lake District fells of Northern England
2004Scientists at The University of Manchester isolate graphene from graphite.
2010The Nobel Prize is awarded to the scientists for their ground-breaking experiments with graphene.
2018inov-8 launch the first-ever sports footwear to utilise graphene, delivering the world’s toughest grip.
Ground-breaking technology
One atom thick carbon sheet
200 x stronger than steel
Thin, light, flexible, with limitless potential
inov-8 COLLABORATION WITH THE NATIONAL GRAPHENE INSTITUTE
Previously athletes had to choose between a sticky rubber that works well in wet or sweaty conditions but wears down quicker, and a harder rubber that is more durable but not quite as grippy. Through intensive research, hundreds of prototypes and thousands of hours of testing in both the field and laboratory, athletes now no longer need to compromise. The new rubber we have developed with the National Graphene Institute at The University of Manchester allows us to smash the limits of grip [sic]
The G-SERIES range is made up of three different shoes, each meticulously designed to meet the needs of athletes. Each includes graphene-enhanced rubber outsoles that deliver the world’s toughest grip and Kevlar – a material used in bulletproof vests – on the uppers.
Bulletproof material for running shoes?
As for Canadians eager to try out these shoes, you will likely have to go online or go to the US. Given how recently (June 19, 2018) this occurred, I’m mentioning the US president’s (Donald Trump) comments that Canadians are notorious for buying shoes in the US and smuggling them across the border back into Canada. (Revelatory information for Canadians everywhere.) His bizarre comments occasioned this explanatory June 19, 2018 article by Jordan Weissmann for Slate.com,
During a characteristically rambling address before the National Federation of Independent Businesses on Tuesday [June 19, 2018], Donald Trump darted off into an odd tangent in which he suggested that Canadians were smuggling shoes across the U.S. border in order to avoid their country’s high tariffs.
There was a story two days ago in a major newspaper talking about people living in Canada coming into the United States and smuggling things back into Canada because the tariffs are so massive. The tariffs to get common items back into Canada are so high that they have to smuggle ‘em in. They buy shoes, then they wear ‘em. They scuff ‘em up. They make ‘em sound old or look old. No, we’re treated horribly. [emphasis mine]
Anyone engaged in this alleged practice would be avoiding payment to the Canadian government. How this constitutes poor treatment of the US government and/or US retailers is a bit a of puzzler.
Getting back to Weissman and his article, he focuses on the source of the US president’s ‘information’.
As for graphene-enhanced ‘shoes’, I hope they are as advertized.
As I understand it, Andre Geim one of the two men (the other was Konstantin Novoselov) to first isolate graphene from a block of graphite by using sticky tape is not thrilled that it’s known in some quarters as the graphene sticky tape method. Still, the technique caught the imagination as Steve Connor’s March 18, 2013 article for the Independent made clear.
It seems scientists are still just as fascinated as anyone else as a February 27, 2018 news item for Nanowerk describes,
Scientists at UCL [University College London] have explained for the first time the mystery of why adhesive tape is so useful for graphene production.
The study, published in Advanced Materials (“Graphene–Graphene Interactions: Friction, Superlubricity, and Exfoliation”), used supercomputers to model the process through which graphene sheets are exfoliated from graphite, the material in pencils.
There are various methods for exfoliating graphene, including the famous adhesive tape method developed by Nobel Prize winner Andre Geim. However little has been known until now about how the process of exfoliating graphene using sticky tape works.
Academics at UCL are now able to demonstrate how individual flakes of graphite can be exfoliated to make one atom thick layers. They also reveal that the process of peeling a layer of graphene demands 40% less energy than that of another common method called shearing. This is expected to have far reaching impacts for the commercial production of graphene.
“The sticky tape method works rather like peeling egg boxes apart with a vertical motion, it is easier than pulling one horizontally across another when they are neatly stacked,” explained Professor Peter Coveney, Director of the Centre for Computational Science (UCL Chemistry).
“If shearing, then you get held up by this egg carton configuration. But if you peel, you can get them apart much more easily. The polymethyl methacrylate adhesive on traditional sticky tape is ideal for picking up the edge of the graphene sheet so it can be lifted and peeled,” added Professor Coveney.
Graphite occurs naturally, its basic crystalline structure is stacks of flat sheets of strongly bonded carbon atoms in a honeycomb pattern. Graphite’s many layers are bound together by weak interactions and can easily slide large distances over one another with little friction due to their superlubricity.
The scientists at UCL simulated an experiment conducted in 2015 at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in Berkeley, California, which used a special microscope with atomic resolution to see how graphene flakes move around on a graphite surface.
The supercomputer’s results matched Berkeley’s observations showing that there is less movement when the graphene atoms neatly line up with the atoms below.
“Despite the vast amount of research carried out on graphene since its discovery, it is clear that until now our understanding of its behaviour on an atomic length scale was very poor,” explains PhD student Robert Sinclair (UCL Chemistry).
“The one reason above all others why the material is difficult to use is because it is hard to make. Even now, a dozen years after its discovery, companies have to apply sticky tape methods to pull it apart, as the Laureates did to uncover it; hardly a hi-tech and industrially simple process to implement. We’re now in a position to assist experimentalists to figure out how to prise it apart, or make it to order. That could have big cost implications for the emerging graphene industry,” said Professor Coveney.
I recently published [March 20, 2018] a piece on ‘smart cities’ both an art/science event in Toronto and a Canadian government initiative without mentioning the necessity of new technology to support all of the grand plans. On that note, it seems the Canadian federal government and two provincial (Québec and Ontario) governments are prepared to invest in one of the necessary ‘new’ technologies, 5G wireless. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s (CBC) Shawn Benjamin reports about Canada’s 5G plans in suitably breathless (even in text only) tones of excitement in a March 19, 2018 article,
The federal, Ontario and Quebec governments say they will spend $200 million to help fund research into 5G wireless technology, the next-generation networks with download speeds 100 times faster than current ones can handle.
The so-called “5G corridor,” known as ENCQOR, will see tech companies such as Ericsson, Ciena Canada, Thales Canada, IBM and CGI kick in another $200 million to develop facilities to get the project up and running.
The idea is to set up a network of linked research facilities and laboratories that these companies — and as many as 1,000 more across Canada — will be able to use to test products and services that run on 5G networks.
Benjamin’s description of 5G is focused on what it will make possible in the future,
If you think things are moving too fast, buckle up, because a new 5G cellular network is just around the corner and it promises to transform our lives by connecting nearly everything to a new, much faster, reliable wireless network.
The first networks won’t be operational for at least a few years, but technology and telecom companies around the world are already planning to spend billions to make sure they aren’t left behind, says Lawrence Surtees, a communications analyst with the research firm IDC.
The new 5G is no tentative baby step toward the future. Rather, as Surtees puts it, “the move from 4G to 5G is a quantum leap.”
…
In a downtown Toronto soundstage, Alan Smithson recently demonstrated a few virtual reality and augmented reality projects that his company MetaVRse is working on.
The potential for VR and AR technology is endless, he said, in large part for its potential to help hurdle some of the walls we are already seeing with current networks.
Virtual Reality technology on the market today is continually increasing things like frame rates and screen resolutions in a constant quest to make their devices even more lifelike.
…
… They [current 4G networks] can’t handle the load. But 5G can do so easily, Smithson said, so much so that the current era of bulky augmented reality headsets could be replaced buy a pair of normal looking glasses.
…
In a 5G world, those internet-connected glasses will automatically recognize everyone you meet, and possibly be able to overlay their name in your field of vision, along with a link to their online profile. …
Benjamin also mentions ‘smart cities’,
In a University of Toronto laboratory, Professor Alberto Leon-Garcia researches connected vehicles and smart power grids. “My passion right now is enabling smart cities — making smart cities a reality — and that means having much more immediate and detailed sense of the environment,” he said.
Faster 5G networks will assist his projects in many ways, by giving planners more, instant data on things like traffic patterns, energy consumption, variou carbon footprints and much more.
…
Leon-Garcia points to a brightly lit map of Toronto [image embedded in Benjamin’s article] in his office, and explains that every dot of light represents a sensor transmitting real time data.
Currently, the network is hooked up to things like city buses, traffic cameras and the city-owned fleet of shared bicycles. He currently has thousands of data points feeding him info on his map, but in a 5G world, the network will support about a million sensors per square kilometre.
…
Very exciting but where is all this data going? What computers will be processing the information? Where are these sensors located? Benjamin does not venture into those waters nor does The Economist in a February 13, 2018 article about 5G, the Olympic Games in Pyeonchang, South Korea, but the magazine does note another barrier to 5G implementation,
“FASTER, higher, stronger,” goes the Olympic motto. So it is only appropriate that the next generation of wireless technology, “5G” for short, should get its first showcase at the Winter Olympics under way in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Once fully developed, it is supposed to offer download speeds of at least 20 gigabits per second (4G manages about half that at best) and response times (“latency”) of below 1 millisecond. So the new networks will be able to transfer a high-resolution movie in two seconds and respond to requests in less than a hundredth of the time it takes to blink an eye. But 5G is not just about faster and swifter wireless connections.
The technology is meant to enable all sorts of new services. One such would offer virtual- or augmented-reality experiences. At the Olympics, for example, many contestants are being followed by 360-degree video cameras. At special venues sports fans can don virtual-reality goggles to put themselves right into the action. But 5G is also supposed to become the connective tissue for the internet of things, to link anything from smartphones to wireless sensors and industrial robots to self-driving cars. This will be made possible by a technique called “network slicing”, which allows operators quickly to create bespoke networks that give each set of devices exactly the connectivity they need.
…
Despite its versatility, it is not clear how quickly 5G will take off. The biggest brake will be economic. [emphasis mine] When the GSMA, an industry group, last year asked 750 telecoms bosses about the most salient impediment to delivering 5G, more than half cited the lack of a clear business case. People may want more bandwidth, but they are not willing to pay for it—an attitude even the lure of the fanciest virtual-reality applications may not change. …
That may not be the only brake, Dexter Johnson in a March 19, 2018 posting on his Nanoclast blog (on the IEEE [Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers] website), covers some of the others (Note: Links have been removed),
Graphene has been heralded as a “wonder material” for well over a decade now, and 5G has been marketed as the next big thing for at least the past five years. Analysts have suggested that 5G could be the golden ticket to virtual reality and artificial intelligence, and promised that graphene could improve technologies within electronics and optoelectronics.
But proponents of both graphene and 5G have also been accused of stirring up hype. There now seems to be a rising sense within industry circles that these glowing technological prospects will not come anytime soon.
At Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona last month [February 2018], some misgivings for these long promised technologies may have been put to rest, though, thanks in large part to each other.
…
In a meeting at MWC with Jari Kinaret, a professor at Chalmers University in Sweden and director of the Graphene Flagship, I took a guided tour around the Pavilion to see some of the technologies poised to have an impact on the development of 5G.
Being invited back to the MWC for three years is a pretty clear indication of how important graphene is to those who are trying to raise the fortunes of 5G. But just how important became more obvious to me in an interview with Frank Koppens, the leader of the quantum nano-optoelectronic group at Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO) just outside of Barcelona, last year.
He said: “5G cannot just scale. Some new technology is needed. And that’s why we have several companies in the Graphene Flagship that are putting a lot of pressure on us to address this issue.”
…
In a collaboration led by CNIT—a consortium of Italian universities and national laboratories focused on communication technologies—researchers from AMO GmbH, Ericsson, Nokia Bell Labs, and Imec have developed graphene-based photodetectors and modulators capable of receiving and transmitting optical data faster than ever before.
The aim of all this speed for transmitting data is to support the ultrafast data streams with extreme bandwidth that will be part of 5G. In fact, at another section during MWC, Ericsson was presenting the switching of a 100 Gigabits per second (Gbps) channel based on the technology.
“The fact that Ericsson is demonstrating another version of this technology demonstrates that from Ericsson’s point of view, this is no longer just research” said Kinaret.
It’s no mystery why the big mobile companies are jumping on this technology. Not only does it provide high-speed data transmission, but it also does it 10 times more efficiently than silicon or doped silicon devices, and will eventually do it more cheaply than those devices, according to Vito Sorianello, senior researcher at CNIT.
…
Interestingly, Ericsson is one of the tech companies mentioned with regard to Canada’s 5G project, ENCQOR and Sweden’s Chalmers University, as Dexter Johnson notes, is the lead institution for the Graphene Flagship.. One other fact to note, Canada’s resources include graphite mines with ‘premium’ flakes for producing graphene. Canada’s graphite mines are located (as far as I know) in only two Canadian provinces, Ontario and Québec, which also happen to be pitching money into ENCQOR. My March 21, 2018 posting describes the latest entry into the Canadian graphite mining stakes.
As for the questions I posed about processing power, etc. It seems the South Koreans have found answers of some kind but it’s hard to evaluate as I haven’t found any additional information about 5G and its implementation in South Korea. If anyone has answers, please feel free to leave them in the ‘comments’. Thank you.
