Author: Tyler Berrigan / Source: Science News for Students
A special computer-controlled laser was used to inscribe patterned graphene onto a range of different materials, including this bread. Beyond drawing cute owls, though, scientists want to use the technology to put electronic sensors on everyday items.
Imagine your favorite food. Now, imagine it tattooed with incredibly thin, edible sensors that could give you useful information. Maybe they could tell you the food’s nutritional content. Or show where and when the food was made — even how it got to your plate. That’s what scientists are working toward. With a special laser, a research team has learned to etch an ultrathin layer of carbon onto everyday materials such as foods and fabric. It’s an early, but important, step toward making a new type of electronic sensor. They could become wearable or even edible.
Yieu Chyan is a chemist at Rice University in Houston, Texas. His team uses lasers to convert carbon in the very topmost layer of different items into an incredibly useful material called graphene (GRAA-feen). It’s a single-atom-thick layer of carbon. The researchers are perfecting their tattooing technique for use on common carbon-containing materials. These include paper, cork, wood, cardboard, cloth — even foods such as potatoes and toast!
The way that carbon atoms are arranged makes graphene appear black. So tattoos created with the laser can look like drawings. But the researchers don’t add ink or anything else to the surface. The graphene forms from carbon atoms that were already part of the material.
Graphene has a honeycomb-shaped structure and is arranged in sheets just one atom thick. As a laser passes over some material’s surface, its intense energy locks together those carbon atoms on the surface, turning them into graphene. Sometimes, the laser instead jumbles up the carbon atoms. This…
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