Friday 5 November 2021

Inflation – The Fed, BOE Bet Lucky.

 Baltic Dry Index. 2769 -123 Brent Crude 81.00

Spot Gold 1795

Coronavirus Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000

Deaths 53,100

Coronavirus Cases 05/11/21 World 249,343,420

Deaths 5,045,072

There can be few fields of human endeavour in which history counts for so little as in the world of finance. Past experience, to the extent that it is part of memory at all, is dismissed as the primitive refuge of those who do not have the insight to appreciate the incredible wonders of the present.

John Kenneth Galbraith.

We open as usual with the Asian stock casinos, where yet another Chinese property company is on the brink of default.

But today’s real stories lie in the Global Inflation/Stagflation section and in the Covid-19 section.

With the dodgy Fedsters and the wimpy Bank of England chickening out on inflation, a massive (intended?) wave of inflation lies ahead, led unfortunately by food prices and fuel, even as China’s growing property collapse might yet drive the world economy into stagflation.

In the Covid-19 section, it’s starting to look dire in Europe and China. With a NYC marathon taking place on Sunday and a half marathon on Sunday taking place in Reading, England, attracting many thousands of runners, organisers and spectators, we are yet again flirting with super spreader events.

Shares of China properties listed in Hong Kong fall, as Kaisa and its units are suspended

SINGAPORE — Stocks in Asia-Pacific were mixed in Friday trade as shares in Hong Kong led losses among the region’s major markets.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index slipped 0.95% by the afternoon, paring some losses after a more than 1% drop earlier. Mainland Chinese stocks were mixed, with the Shanghai composite down 0.24% while the Shenzhen component gained 0.173%.

Shares of Chinese property developers in Hong Kong fell. China Evergrande Group slipped 2.97% while China Vanke dropped 1.51% and Sunac China Holdings plunged nearly 6%. The Hang Seng Properties index dipped 0.13%.

Trading in Hong Kong-listed shares of Chinese property developer Kaisa Group and several of its units was suspended on Friday, according to exchange notices.

It came after Kaisa Group said Thursday its finance unit missed a payment on a wealth management product, according to Reuters. Kaisa is the second-largest issuer of U.S. dollar-denominated offshore high-yield bonds among Chinese developers, according to Natixis. Evergrande ranks first.

It comes as investors continue to watch for developments in China’s property sector following the fallout from heavily indebted Evergrande. A few other Chinese real estate firms had also been under the spotlight for going into default, or missing payments on their debt.

Elsewhere, Asia-Pacific stocks were mixed as South Korea’s Kospi fell 0.44%. Shares in Japan also declined as the Nikkei 225 slipped 0.77% and the Topix index shed 0.88%.

----Overnight stateside, the S&P 500 climbed 0.42% to 4,680.06, another record closing high. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite also rose 0.81% to an all-time closing high of 15,940.31. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lagged, dipping 33.35 points to 36,124.23.

The gains on Wall Street came following the U.S. Federal Reserve’s announcement on Wednesday that it will begin to slow its bond-buying program later this month.

More

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/05/asia-markets-sp-500-record-closing-high-currencies-oil.html

Kaisa, units trading suspended as debt crisis routs Chinese developers' shares

HONG KONG/SHANGHAI, Nov 5 (Reuters) - Kaisa Group Holdings Ltd (1638.HK) and three of its units had their shares suspended from trading on Friday, a day after an affiliate missed a payment to onshore investors as China's snowballing property debt crisis jolts other developers.

Shenzhen-based homebuilder Kaisa, which has guaranteed the wealth management product, said in a statement on Thursday it is facing unprecedented liquidity pressure due to a challenging property market and rating downgrades.

Kaisa and its unit Kaisa Prosperity (2168.HK) said in separate exchange filings on Friday that trading in their shares were being suspended pending the release of "inside information". The companies did not elaborate.

Reuters reported last month, citing sources, that Kaisa was seeking buyers for its property management unit Kaisa Prosperity and two residential sites in Hong Kong, as it scrambles to meet a wall of debt repayments. read more

Kaisa's troubles come amid concerns about a broadening liquidity crisis in the Chinese property sector, with a string of offshore debt defaults, credit rating downgrades and sell-offs in the developers' shares and bonds in recent weeks.

Kaisa has the most offshore debt coming due over the next year of any Chinese developer after embattled China Evergrande Group (3333.HK), which is reeling under more than $300 billion in liabilities.

A finance unit of Kaisa had missed a payment on a wealth management product (WMP), the developer said on Thursday, adding it was raising funds to ease the pressure by taking measures including speeding up asset sales. read more

More

https://www.reuters.com/business/trading-shares-chinese-developer-kaisa-group-units-suspended-2021-11-05/

Next, more sign of President Biden’s declining clout on the world stage following the rout in Afghanistan. Are the Carter years back?

OPEC+ agrees to stick to oil production plan, defying U.S. pressure

OPEC and its oil-producing allies have agreed to continue with their current output plan, deciding against loosening the taps in the face of multiyear highs in crude prices and U.S. pressure to help cool the market.

The group, known as OPEC+, will rollover its August program to gradually increase oil production by 400,000 barrels per day each month.

Russian Energy Minister Alexander Novak told a news conference Thursday: “The decision was made previously to increase production by 400,000 (barrels per day) every month, and I underscore every month, until the end of 2022. Today the decision was reiterated to maintain current parameters which were decided on earlier.”

Asked why the group was not boosting its production levels despite complaints and requests from oil consumers like the U.S., India and Japan, Novak replied that OPEC and its allies were maintaining market balance and remaining wary of potential changes in demand.

“From August until now, we have added 2 million barrels of additional production to the market,” Novak said. “So as planned, we are giving the market more and more volume, as it is recovering, at the same time we also see there is a seasonal drop in demand in the fourth and first quarters of the year, and also there are some signs such as a decrease in oil product demand in the EU in October, which we have observed.” 

The minister continued that this “basically underscores the fact that global oil demand is still under pressure from the delta Covid variant, and due to the preservation of various limitations and Covid measures in some countries.”

Oil prices have recently hit their highest levels since 2014, and crude-importing countries are feeling the pain.

President Joe Biden squarely blamed the reluctance of OPEC+ to pump more oil for the sharp rise in energy prices in the U.S. and around the world.

“The idea that Russia and Saudi Arabia and other major producers are not going to pump more oil so people can have gasoline to get to and from work, for example, is not right,” Biden said Sunday at the G-20 meeting in Rome.

More

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/04/opec-agrees-to-stick-to-oil-production-plan-defying-us-pressure.html

Finally, in an irony lost on the eco-fanatics assembled in rainy, windy cold COP26 Glasgow, it’s coal keeping the lights on, and the sanctimonious warm.

Coal Keeps Lights On At COP26 As Low Wind Strikes Again

by Tyler Durden  Thursday, Nov 04, 2021 - 02:00

The UK’s failing renewable strategy is a national embarrassment. Critically low wind power, for nearly the whole of yesterday, resulted in extremely high prices, with the two remaining coal units at Drax offering to saving the day at £4,000/MWh, nearly 100 times the wholesale price normal before the current crisis started, with many other fossil fuel generators also riding to the rescue at staggering prices.

Indeed, yesterday, 3 November, saw a new record for the total daily cost of balancing the GB electricity grid. The previous record of £38 million, twenty times the current daily average, was smashed by a margin of £6 million, with the new record standing at £44.7m.

The causes are easy to identify from the Balancing Mechanism Reporting Service’s own chart of the Transmission System fuel mix. Wind power, the dark blue bars, was extremely low for most of the day, with a minimum of only 1 GW, under 5% of its capacity.

Minimum wind generation coincided neatly with peak demand, and as a result system prices reached stunning levels, with a maximum of just over £4,000 a megawatt hour, nearly 100 times the wholesale price normal before the current crisis started, as can be seen in this BMRS chart:

---- These prices brought coal and gas back on to the system to save the day, but emergency measures are expensive, and the cost to consumers and the wider economy was little short of horrifying.

More

https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/coal-keeps-lights-cop26-low-wind-strikes-again

Global Inflation/Stagflation Watch.

Given our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians,  inflation now needs an entire section of its own.

Clinton Treasury Chief Sounds Alarm on Inflation: Biden Administration ‘Still Not Fully Recognizing the Gravity of the Situation’

Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers on Thursday advised the Biden administration to take the threat of rising inflation more seriously.

“I think it’s a mistake to think of this as only an issue about stimulus,” Summers said in a morning interview with CNN’s Brianna Keilar. “It’s also an issue around what’s happened with the Federal Reserve. It’s also an issue around the fact that Covid mutated into the Delta variant. It’s also related to broad geopolitical developments and climate that have impacted on the energy markets.”

“I think we do need to recognize, as people are starting to, that inflation is a serious problem,” he added. “I think if we can resolve the stimulus … debate quickly and pass legislation oriented to increasing supply that’s paid for in what it does — I think those are going to be the best ways forward. I think the Fed is still not fully recognizing the gravity of the situation.”

Summers, who served as Treasury secretary under former President Bill Clinton and as director of the National Economic Council under former President Barack Obama, has been warning about inflation since Biden took office. He prompted his successor, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, to claim last month that he was “wrong” about the issue as she asserted “we haven’t lost control” of inflation, despite some analysts predicting inflation could reach a level as high as 5 percent in 2022.

“She expresses confidence that inflation is decelerating and will be back to target levels by the end of next year,” Summers replied on Twitter at the time. “I hope she is right but I think it’s much less than a 50/50 chance.”

“I think it’s almost certain to last for another six to nine months, and it could well last longer,” he added in Thursday’s interview.

https://www.mediaite.com/news/clinton-treasury-chief-sounds-alarm-on-inflation-biden-administration-still-not-fully-recognizing-the-gravity-of-the-situation/

METALS-Tight supply and dovish Fed lift copper prices

November 4, 2021 12:19 PM

LONDON, Nov 4 (Reuters) - Copper prices rose on Thursday after two days of losses, helped by tight supply of the metal and a pledge by the U.S. Federal Reserve to go slow on interest rate rises.

Global stock markets hit record highs after the Fed said it would trim its bond-buying programme but wait for more job growth before raising rates.

The Bank of England also kept interest rates on hold on Thursday, defying expectations of a rate rise.

Benchmark copper on the London Metal Exchange (LME) was up 1.1% at $9,565 a tonne in official trading.

Copper prices have climbed more than 20% this year after a 26% increase in 2020 but have largely trodden water since reaching an all-time peak of $10,747.50 in May.

Higher coal prices in China are supporting copper as they have raised the cost of producing the metal, said Gianclaudio Torlizzi at consultants T-Commodity. China is the biggest smelter of metals.

Torlizzi said he expected copper to rise as a global semiconductor shortage eases, global growth improves, supply remains tight and the Fed keeps monetary policy loose.

“Production costs have risen and that will create a higher floor for prices,” he said. “I see this as an opportunity to get long again.”

More

https://www.reuters.com/article/global-metals/metals-tight-supply-and-dovish-fed-lift-copper-prices-idUSL1N2RV0YC

Euro zone producer prices make record jump in September - Eurostat

BRUSSELS, Nov 4 (Reuters) - Euro zone producer prices jumped in September more than expected, driven by skyrocketing energy costs, recording their highest increase on record in a new sign of strong inflationary pressures in the bloc, public data showed on Thursday.

The European Union's statistics office Eurostat estimated that prices at factory gates in the 19 countries sharing the euro rose 2.7% month-on-month in September for a 16.0% year-on-year jump, in the biggest increases ever recorded for the bloc.

The jump also exceeded expectations, as economists polled by Reuters had forecast a 2.2% monthly rise and a 15.2% surge on the year.

Producers' prices rose sharply amid a fast economic recovery after the most acute phase of the COVID-19 pandemic, a tightening of global supply chains, and a jump in gas prices.

Energy prices rose 7.7% month-on-month for a 40.7% year-on-year surge, accelerating their increase. However, total industry prices excluding energy rose only 0.6% on the month, slowing from previous months.

The rise in industrial prices mirrors the surge of consumer prices which increased in the bloc annually 3.4% in September, according to Eurostat, which has estimated a 4.1% surge in October read more .

Producer price rises usually translate into higher prices for consumers that the European Central Bank wants to keep rising at around 2%. The bank and euro zone finance ministers expect the inflation spike to pass in coming months and inflation to slow in 2022.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/euro-zone-producer-prices-make-record-jump-september-eurostat-2021-11-04/

World food prices hit new 10-year high in October -FAO

November 4, 2021 9:30 AM  By Reuters Staff

PARIS (Reuters) - World food prices rose for a third straight month in October to reach a fresh 10-year peak, led again by increases in cereals and vegetable oils, the UN food agency said on Thursday.

The Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) food price index, which tracks international prices of the most globally traded food commodities, averaged 133.2 points last month compared with a revised 129.2 for September.

The September figure was previously given as 130.0.

The October reading was the highest for the index since July 2011. On a year-on-year basis, the index was up 31.3% in October.

Agricultural commodity prices have risen steeply in the past year, driven by harvest setbacks and strong demand.

The FAO’s cereal price index rose by 3.2% in October from the previous month. That was led by a 5% jump in wheat prices, which climbed for a fifth consecutive month to reach their highest since November 2012, FAO said.

“Tighter availability in global markets due to reduced harvests in major exporters, especially Canada, the Russian Federation and the United States of America, continued to put upward pressure on prices,” FAO said of wheat.

Wheat futures started November at new peaks, with U.S. prices at fresh highs since 2012 and Paris front-month futures at a record high as import demand remained brisk. [GRA/] [GRA/TEND]

World vegetable oil prices jumped 9.6% on the month to set a record high, supported by further strength in palm oil prices as labour shortages in Malaysia continued to hamper production, FAO said. [POI/]

In contrast, global sugar prices eased 1.8% in October, ending a run of six straight monthly rises, according to FAO.

Rome-based FAO cut its projection of global cereal production in 2021, to 2.793 billion tonnes from 2.800 billion estimated a month ago, according to its cereal supply and demand outlook.

That mainly reflected reduced wheat output estimates for Iran, Turkey and the United States, offsetting an increased forecast for coarse grain production.

Expected world cereal output would still represent a record, but would trail projected demand, leading to a fall in forecast cereal stocks, FAO said.

Demand was supported by a raised projection of global cereal trade to a new record, bolstered by increased wheat trade.

https://www.reuters.com/article/global-economy-food/world-food-prices-hit-new-10-year-high-in-october-fao-idUSKBN2HP131

Meat 'sticker shock' looms as US$3,000 bonuses fail to end worker shortfall

November 4, 2021

With the pandemic igniting a collective reassessment of work, imagine posting openings for low-wage jobs that could require standing for 12-hour shifts, working six-day weeks and repeatedly lifting 70-pound objects in conditions that range from steaming hot to bloody and ice cold. And on top of all that, your industry recently made headlines for COVID-19 outbreaks that killed workers. 

This is precisely what meatpackers are facing.

Of all the industries experiencing crunches for hourly labor, it’s hard to find one with a greater recruiting challenge. Companies have tried all the usual tricks to lure applicants, including offering signing bonuses of as much as US$3,000, but they’re still short workers and, as a result, there are an increasing number of sparse shelves.

For America's meateaters, this is a problem. Some cuts have soared 25 per cent over the past year, while others are fetching near record prices, making meat one of the biggest contributors to pandemic inflation. And industry experts expect meat to keep gaining through the holidays and beyond.

“The sticker shock is what we all need to be prepared for,” said Bindiya Vakil, chief executive officer of supply-chain consultant Resilinc. “This is here to stay, at least through the summer of 2022.”

Before COVID, meat processors struggled to meet their labor needs, which increased the hiring of immigrant workers mostly from Mexico. More than a third of the workforce was foreign born, according to a 2020 report by the Economic Policy Institute. That hurt the industry when the Trump administration curtailed immigration.

The pandemic only exacerbated the hiring woes, while raising new concerns about how meatpackers will recruit in the long term. The industry expected the labor shortage to get easier after extra unemployment benefits in the COVID relief ended in September, but it hasn’t. Across the overall job market, the number of people quitting is surging and job openings remain near all-time highs. Online postings for meat processing positions are up 66 per cent from a year ago, according to Emsi Burning Glass, an analytics firm.

“Employers are going to get increasingly desperate,” said Ron Hetrick, senior labor economist at Emsi Burning Glass.

Meanwhile, retailers and shipping companies are adding to the pressure with plans to hire hundreds of thousands of workers for the holidays. Amazon alone aims to bring on 150,000 temps, a 50 per cent increase from a year ago, at an average starting hourly wage of at least US$18, which exceeds or matches a lot of meat processing jobs. The labor battle in retail has been intense for years, pushing chains to boost pay and add benefits such as parental leave and college reimbursement. 

---- Smithfield Foods, the world’s biggest pork producer, is paying workers more, but also touting perks like US$2,500 relocation payments and Walmart gift cards. Rival JBS SA is offering signing and retention bonuses totaling US$3,200. And it’s trying to lure people to job fairs with free lunch.

More

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/meat-sticker-shock-looms-as-3-000-bonuses-fail-to-end-worker-shortfall-1.1676898

If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.

John Kenneth Galbraith.

Covid-19 Corner

This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.

Britain approves Merck's oral COVID-19 pill in world first

REUTERS   NOVEMBER 4, 2021 12:56

Britain on Thursday became the first country in the world to approve a potentially game-changing COVID-19 antiviral oral pill jointly developed by Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, in a boost to the fight against the pandemic.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) recommended that the drug, molnupiravir, be used as soon as possible following a positive COVID-19 test and within five days of the onset of symptoms.

The government and the NHS will confirm how this COVID-19 treatment will be deployed to patients in due course. 

Separately, Merck said it was expecting to produce 10 million courses of the treatment by the end of this year, with at least 20 million courses set to be manufactured in 2022.

https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/britain-approves-mercks-oral-covid-19-pill-in-world-first-683995

'Grave concern' over Covid in Europe as German cases soar

Issued on:

Frankfurt (AFP) – The World Health Organization expressed "grave concern" Thursday over the rising pace of coronavirus infections in Europe, as Germany registered its biggest daily increase since the start of the pandemic.

"We are, once again, at the epicentre," WHO Europe director Hans Kluge told a press conference.

He warned that according to "one reliable projection" the current trajectory would mean "another half a million Covid-19 deaths" by February.

Alarm bells were ringing especially in Germany, the European Union's most populous country, where the number of new cases over the past 24 hours soared to almost 34,000 on Thursday -- an all-time high, according to the Robert Koch Institute health agency.

---- German Health Minister Jens Spahn said on Wednesday that the country of 83 million people was facing a "massive" pandemic among the unvaccinated and that intensive care beds were starting to run out in some regions.

"Corona is once again raging with full force, the fourth wave is hitting us hard," the top-selling Bild daily wrote.

The WHO's Europe region -- which spans 53 countries and territories and includes several nations in Central Asia -- has now recorded 78 million cases since Covid-19 first emerged in China in late 2019.

The cumulative figure exceeds that of South East Asia, the Eastern Mediterranean region, the Western Pacific, and Africa combined, the organisation said.

The "current pace of transmission" across the European region "is of grave concern", Kluge said.

The WHO blamed a combination of insufficient vaccination rates and a relaxation of preventative measures like mask-wearing and social distancing.

Hospital admission rates were higher in countries where fewer people are vaccinated, Kluge added.

The number of new daily cases has been rising for nearly six consecutive weeks in Europe and the number of new deaths per day has been rising for just over seven consecutive weeks, with about 250,000 cases and 3,600 deaths per day, according to official national data compiled by AFP.

Over the past seven days, Russia -- a country with strong vaccine hesitancy -- has led the rise with 8,162 deaths, followed by Ukraine with 3,819 deaths and Romania with 3,100 deaths, according to the data.

More

https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20211104-grave-concern-over-covid-in-europe-as-german-cases-soar

Austrian coronavirus cases surge as lockdown for vaccine holdouts looms

VIENNA, Nov 4 (Reuters) - Austria's daily new coronavirus infections surged on Thursday towards the record set a year ago, making a lockdown for the unvaccinated ever more likely as the government struggles to convince holdouts to get their shot.

Roughly 64% of Austria's population is fully vaccinated against the coronavirus. That is in line with the European Union average but it is also among the lowest rates in western Europe. Many Austrians are sceptical about vaccines, a view encouraged by the far-right Freedom Party, the third-biggest in parliament.

The number of new daily infections rose to 8,594 on Thursday, data from the interior and health ministries showed. That was a 32% increase from Wednesday and approaching the record of more than 9,000 set in November of last year, when the second of three nationwide lockdowns was ordered.

Having taken a hands-off approach to restrictions last summer, the conservative-led government has since outlined a plan under which the unvaccinated population will be placed under lockdown, with restrictions on their daily movements, once 600 intensive-care beds are filled with COVID-19 patients.

Under that incremental plan the unvaccinated, not including those who have recovered from a coronavirus infection, will be barred from cafes and restaurants once 500 intensive-care beds are occupied by COVID-19 patients. The number of those beds currently in use is 352 and rising by more than 10 a day.

Of Austria's nine provinces, Salzburg and Upper Austria accounted for 45% of Thursday's new cases. Those two conservative-led provinces have by far the most infections relative to population. Upper Austria, a Freedom Party stronghold, has Austria's lowest vaccination rate.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/austrian-coronavirus-cases-surge-lockdown-vaccine-holdouts-looms-2021-11-04/

Next, some vaccine links kindly sent along from a LIR reader in Canada. The links come from a most informative update from Stanford Hospital in California.

World Health Organization - Landscape of COVID-19 candidate vaccineshttps://www.who.int/publications/m/item/draft-landscape-of-covid-19-candidate-vaccines

NY Times Coronavirus Vaccine Trackerhttps://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus-vaccine-tracker.html

Regulatory Focus COVID-19 vaccine trackerhttps://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2020/3/covid-19-vaccine-tracker

Some other useful Covid links.

Johns Hopkins Coronavirus resource centre

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

Rt Covid-19

https://rt.live/

Centers for Disease Control Coronavirus

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html

The Spectator Covid-19 data tracker (UK)

https://data.spectator.co.uk/city/national

 

Technology Update.

With events happening fast in the development of solar power and graphene, I’ve added this section. Updates as they get reported.

Researchers move closer to controlling two-dimensional graphene

Date:  November 1, 2021

Source:  Columbia University

Summary:  New results relied on a cleaner technique to manipulate the flow of electricity, giving graphene greater conductivity than metals such as copper and gold, and raising its potential for use in telecommunications systems and quantum computers.

The device you are currently reading this article on was born from the silicon revolution. To build modern electrical circuits, researchers control silicon's current-conducting capabilities via doping, which is a process that introduces either negatively charged electrons or positively charged "holes" where electrons used to be. This allows the flow of electricity to be controlled and for silicon involves injecting other atomic elements that can adjust electrons -- known as dopants -- into its three-dimensional (3D) atomic lattice.

Silicon's 3D lattice, however, is too big for next-generation electronics, which include ultra-thin transistors, new devices for optical communication, and flexible bio-sensors that can be worn or implanted in the human body. To slim things down, researchers are experimenting with materials no thicker than a single sheet of atoms, such as graphene. But the tried-and-true method for doping 3D silicon doesn't work with 2D graphene, which consists of a single layer of carbon atoms that doesn't normally conduct a current.

Rather than injecting dopants, researchers have tried layering on a "charge-transfer layer" intended to add or pull away electrons from the graphene. However, previous methods used "dirty" materials in their charge-transfer layers; impurities in these would leave the graphene unevenly doped and impede its ability to conduct electricity.

Now, a new study in Nature Electronics proposes a better way. An interdisciplinary team of researchers, led by James Hone and James Teherani at Columbia University, and Won Jong Yoo at Sungkyungkwan University in Korea, describe a clean technique to dope graphene via a charge-transfer layer made of low-impurity tungsten oxyselenide (TOS).

The team generated the new "clean" layer by oxidizing a single atomic layer of another 2D material, tungsten selenide. When TOS was layered on top of graphene, they found that it left the graphene riddled with electricity-conducting holes. Those holes could be fine-tuned to better control the materials' electricity-conducting properties by adding a few atomic layers of tungsten selenide in between the TOS and the graphene.

The researchers found that graphene's electrical mobility, or how easily charges move through it, was higher with their new doping method than previous attempts. Adding tungsten selenide spacers further increased the mobility to the point where the effect of the TOS becomes negligible, leaving mobility to be determined by the intrinsic properties of graphene itself. This combination of high doping and high mobility gives graphene greater electrical conductivity than that of highly conductive metals like copper and gold.

---- The team found a much smaller loss for TOS-doped graphene than for other conductors, suggesting that this method could hold potential for next-generation ultra-efficient photonic devices.

"This is a new way to tailor the properties of graphene on demand," Hone said. "We have just begun to explore the possibilities of this new technique."

One promising direction is to alter graphene's electronic and optical properties by changing the pattern of the TOS, and to imprint electrical circuits directly on the graphene itself. The team is also working to integrate the doped material into novel photonic devices, with potential applications in transparent electronics, telecommunications systems, and quantum computers.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/11/211101171220.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fmatter_energy%2Fgraphene+%28Graphene+News+--+ScienceDaily%29

Another weekend and will we finally get a break from all the sanctimonious posturing at COP26 in Glasgow, aided and abetted by our gullible mass media? Hell is more likely to freeze over first. This weekend, global mass demonstrations are planned.

It’s fireworks night in GB, celebrating Guy Fawkes failed attempt to blow up Parliament.  Come back Guy, all is now forgiven!!! Have a great weekend everyone.

21st century adage: Is that true, or did you hear it on the BBC?

 

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