What could possibly be cooler than graphene or carbon nanotubes? Rice University’s new material that consists of forests of carbon nanotubes grown on sheets of graphene, of course!

This graphene/nanotube hybrid is as awesome as it sounds, too; we’re talking about a material that might be the single best electrode interface possible, potentially revolutionizing both energy storage (batteries, supercapacitors) and electronics.

To create the hybrid material, the James Tour Group at Rice University began with a copper substrate coated in a single layer of carbon atoms (graphene). From here, the process is a little bit mystical — it sounds like they place a mixture of aluminium oxide and an “iron catalyst” on the graphene, and heat the whole thing in a furnace. Within a few minutes, carbon nanotubes skyscrapers spring up from the graphene.

As you can see in the picture below, we’re quite literally talking about a sheet of graphene with carbon nanotubes growing upwards from it — up to a distance of 120 microns (0.12mm), which is really rather impressive at this scale. If we scaled it up to actual trees, they would rise into outer space. As you can see in the image at the top of the story, the carbon nanotube forest is also very dense. The most important thing, though, is that the bonds between the graphene and nanotubes are completely seamless — as far as electrons are concerned, there is absolutely no resistance when transitioning between graphene and nanotube.

Why is this important? Because this hybrid material has a ridiculously vast surface area: A single gram of the new material has a surface area of 2,000 square meters (21,500 sq ft) — half an acre of the most conductive material in the world. When it comes to energy storage, there is a direct correlation between energy density and the surface area of the electrodes — this new graphene/nanotube hybrid could result in significantly smaller batteries, or larger batteries that can do more work. In testing, Rice University created a supercapacitor with the new material that matches “the best carbon-based supercapacitors that have ever been made,” which is impressive because “we’re not really a supercapacitor lab, and still we were able to match the performance because of the quality of the electrode.”

Moving forward, the next step for advances such as this is production of the new material in commercial quantities. In all likelihood, the research baton will now pass to commercial companies, such as Intel, Sony, or Samsung, who will try to develop real components and batteries using the graphene/carbon nanotube hybrid material.

Now read: IBM creates breathing, high-density, light-weight lithium-air battery

Research paper: doi:10.1038/ncomms2234 – “A seamless three-dimensional carbon nanotube graphene hybrid material”