Graphene can be made into chemical sensors, and this process is mainly completed through the surface adsorption performance of graphene. According to the research of some scholars, the sensitivity of graphene chemical detector can be comparable to the limit of single molecule detection. Graphene's unique two-dimensional structure makes it very sensitive to the surrounding environment.

2. Transistor

Graphene can be used to make transistors. Because of the high stability of graphene structure, this transistor can still work stably on the scale close to a single atom.

3. Desalination of seawater

Graphene filters are used more than other seawater desalination technologies. After the graphene oxide film in water environment is in close contact with water, a channel with a width of about 0.9 nm can be formed, and ions or molecules smaller than this size can quickly pass through. By further compressing the capillary channel size and controlling the pore size in graphene film by mechanical means, the salt in seawater can be filtered efficiently.

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Characteristics of graphene

Graphene has very good optical properties, the absorption rate is about 2.3% in a wide wavelength range, and it looks almost transparent. Within the range of several layers of graphene thickness, the absorption rate increases by 2.3% as the thickness of each layer increases. Large-area graphene films also have excellent optical properties, and their optical properties change with the change of graphene thickness.

This is an unusual low-energy electronic structure of single-layer graphene. At room temperature, the band gap of graphene can be adjusted from 0 to 0~0.25eV by applying voltage to the double-gate double-layer graphene field effect transistor. When a magnetic field is applied, the optical response of graphene nanoribbons can be tuned to the terahertz range.