Atomic-scale chicken-wire keeps the salt penned in
ALLOTROPES of carbon—varying forms of the element in which the atoms are stuck together in different patterns—have a mixed record of practical use. Diamonds, famously, are a girl’s best friend. Graphite makes good pencil lead. But buckminsterfullerene, in which the atoms are arranged like the geodesic domes beloved of the eponymous American architect, though hailed as a wonder material, proved largely useless.
Graphene, which looks like atomic-scale chicken-wire, may be in the useful camp. At room temperature, it is the best conductor of heat yet found. It is being developed as a photoreceptor, to convert light into electricity. And now two groups of engineers, one at Lockheed Martin, an American aerospace company, the other at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), are trying to use it to desalinate water. That could change the world.