The queen of carbon.

BEFORE SILICON GOT ITS OWN VALLEY, THIS mild-mannered element had to vanquish many other contenders to prove itself the premier semiconductor technology. It did so in the 1950s and 1960s. Today, carbon is poised at a similar crossroads, with carbon-based technologies on the verge of transforming computing and boosting batterystorage capacities. Already, researchers have used these technologies to demonstrate paper-thin batteries, unbreakable touch screens, and terabit-speed wireless communications And on the farther horizon they envision such carbon-enabled wonders as space elevators, filters that can make seawater drinkable, bionic organs, and transplantable neurons. Whatever miracles emerge from Carbon Valley, its carbon-techtitans will surely think fondly upon their field's founding mother, Mildred Dresselhaus. This MIT professor of physics and engineering has, since the early 1960s, been laying the groundwork for networks of nanometerscale carbon sheets, lattices, wires, and switches. Future engineers will turn these things, fabricated from carbon-based materials such as graphene, into the systems that will carry computing into its next era. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]