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Tiny Wrinkles in Graphene Can Create Surprisingly Powerful Electric Charges, Rice Study Finds

Engineers at Rice University discovered that sharply curved wrinkles folded into graphene, a material just one atom thick, can generate an electrical charge separation between 100,000 and 10 million times stronger than seen in much larger flexoelectric materials. The effect depends on how sharply the wrinkle bends rather than its height, suggesting future electronics could be tuned by reshaping materials at the atomic scale instead of changing what they are made of.