Deflating graphene balloons act as sensors for hard-to-detect gases

Graphene has a lot of attractive properties for material scientists working to develop everything form next-gen computer chips, to advanced solar cells and more sensitive microphones.

But a research team behind a new breakthrough, from Delft University of Technology and the University of Duisburg-Essen, have fashioned the nanomaterial into microscopic balloons they say can distinguish between different kinds of these hard-to-detect noble gases, by measuring how long they take to escape through tiny perforations in the surface of the balloons. 

Beyond that, they say the work also demonstrates how graphene can used to study gas dynamics on microscopic scales.