Making the Internet go faster with graphene-enhanced switches

Just how tough is graphene?  Researchers have theorized that it'd require an elephant, balanced on a pencil, to break through a single sheet.  Every industry, it seems, has been grazed by graphene's wondrous potential -- the strength, light-weight nature (a single sheet of carbon atoms so thin it's actually transparent), flexibility and conductivity can be replicated at a relatively low cost and applied to a plethora of materials.

The latest industry it may soon help -- telecom.   How?  Enhancing switches to increase speed of data transfer rates. 

"Ordinarily optical switches respond at rate of a few picoseconds – around a trillionth of a second. Through this study physicists have observed the response rate of an optical switch using ‘few layer graphene’ to be around one hundred femtoseconds – nearly a hundred times quicker than current materials."

How would this technology be implemented?  Commenting on the report’s main findings, lead researcher Dr Enrico Da Como noted:

"Right now the capacity for data transfer in fibre optics is below a terabit per second,” he says. “But graphene will allow us to reach the one terabit per second rate ... It will take some years and there is engineering development to be done, but I think it will be in about four or five years. We are working on the first prototypes now." 

sources:  

•  http://www.bath.ac.uk/news/2013/07/12/graphene-internet-speed
• http://www.information-age.com/technology/mobile-and-networking/123457194/graphene-based-optical-switches-promise-lightning-fast-networks
• http://www.gizmag.com/graphene-faster-internet/28382/

“Right now the capacity for data transfer in fibre optics is below a terabit per second,” he says. “But graphene will allow us to reach the one terabit per second rate.
“It will take some years and there is engineering development to be done, but I think it will be in about four or five years. We are working on the first prototypes now.”
- See more at: http://www.information-age.com/technology/mobile-and-networking/123457194/graphene-based-optical-switches-promise-lightning-fast-networks--#sthash.SP1VkbfO.dpuf

“Right now the capacity for data transfer in fibre optics is below a terabit per second,” he says. “But graphene will allow us to reach the one terabit per second rate.
“It will take some years and there is engineering development to be done, but I think it will be in about four or five years. We are working on the first prototypes now.”
- See more at: http://www.information-age.com/technology/mobile-and-networking/123457194/graphene-based-optical-switches-promise-lightning-fast-networks--#sthash.SP1VkbfO.dpuf

“Right now the capacity for data transfer in fibre optics is below a terabit per second,” he says. “But graphene will allow us to reach the one terabit per second rate.
“It will take some years and there is engineering development to be done, but I think it will be in about four or five years. We are working on the first prototypes now.”
- See more at: http://www.information-age.com/technology/mobile-and-networking/123457194/graphene-based-optical-switches-promise-lightning-fast-networks--#sthash.SP1VkbfO.dpuf