Brexit – The Great Escape.

Baltic Dry Index. 1333 +51   Brent Crude 51.37

LIR Gold Target in 2019: $30,000.  Revised due to QE programs.

During my life time most of the problems the world has faced have come, in one fashion or other, from mainland Europe, and the solutions from outside it."

Margaret Thatcher

Part one of John Bull’s daring Great Escape from the wealth and jobs destroying, dying EUSSR, swings into action today, with HMG triggering the escape clause Article 50. Not that you would know it from the BBC and much of mainstream media still peddling Project Fear fake news.  The sky will fall they scream. But given the state of the world, the sky may fall, with GB in or out of the EUSSR anyway. But if we are out of the wealth and jobs destroying,  unreformed, dying EUSSR, our chances for recovery are infinitely better and faster. If it happens, let GB be a beacon to the rest.

Below, Germany on the ropes, from Migrant Mad Merkel’s failed attempt to get Dodgy Dave Cameron to sell an empty EU reform envelope to British voters. Her anti-Trump campaign against America is going over like a lead balloon too.

"What we should grasp, however, from the lessons of European history is that, first, there is nothing necessarily benevolent about programmes of European integration; second, the desire to achieve grand utopian plans often poses a grave threat to freedom; and third, European unity has been tried before, and the outcome was far from happy."

Margaret Thatcher

Tue Mar 28, 2017 | 3:49am EDT

Brexit will hurt business for German firms, DIHK says

Britain's departure from the European Union will significantly hurt German firms' business with the United Kingdom and investment will decline strongly in the long term, the president of Germany's DIHK Chambers of Commerce said on Tuesday.

Four in ten companies expect business to weaken, DIHK President Eric Schweitzer said a day before Britain triggers divorce proceedings with the European Union.

"We should expect further declines in trade in the coming months," he added.

He said almost one in ten companies was already planning to withdraw investment from Britain even though the terms of Britain's departure are not yet known.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-germany-idUSKBN16Z0QX?il=0

Tue Mar 28, 2017 | 3:09am EDT

Changes: Five ways Brexit will transform the EU

Leaving the European Union, to be triggered by Prime Minister Theresa May on Wednesday, may transform Britain but it will also change the EU. Here's how:

EU BUDGET: WHERE'S THE MONEY GONE?

The Union's budget accounts for only 2 percent of public spending in the bloc. But in the east, transfers from Brussels contribute a much bigger share - some 8 percent of Poland's budget and nearly a fifth of Bulgaria's.

Without Britain, Brussels will have about a sixth less to give to countries that are net recipients, setting up a fight between east and west over a 7-year spending plan from 2021.

In the short term, there will also be a battle with Britain over what it owes on leaving. London may choose to keep paying for access to some key EU budgets, such as for research. But big accounts, like farm subsidies, could be in for radical review.

BALANCE OF POWER: FRIENDS LEFT IN LURCH

Britain has used its 12-percent share of EU votes to curb Brussels spending and push hard for free trade. Its departure worries smaller northern allies like the Nordics and Dutch.

Poorer easterners, whose membership Britain championed, fret that Germany and France may stiffen barriers to their low-wage workforce or beef up EU federal powers the ex-communist states dislike. Aspiring new members, notably in the Balkans, also lose an ally against rich westerners wary of further EU enlargement.

The 19 euro countries will lose a key block on their caucus power. They can now outvote non-euro states, but only just. A non-euro bloc led by Poland and Sweden would need major dissent among euro countries to prevent the euro zone setting EU policy.

France becomes the EU's only nuclear-armed, veto-wielding U.N. Security Council member and loses a dogged opponent of its ambitions for more EU defense cooperation outside the U.S.-led NATO alliance; defense is already back on Brussels' agenda.

Germany, ambivalent about being seen as dominating Europe by dint of its economic muscle and being home to nearly one post-Brexit EU citizen in five, is uneasy about how to maintain balance, notably with economically struggling co-founder France.

EU IN THE WORLD: A DIMINISHED FORCE

The EU loses a hefty interlocutor with the United States and the wider English-speaking world. A historic diplomatic and military force, Britain's insight and influence with powers like China and Russia or in the Middle East have been useful to the EU. In Africa, a source of growing concern over migration, British aid budgets and other clout have played a key role.

London's tough line with Moscow has won it friends among the likes of the Baltic states and the Netherlands, which fear that a softer approach from France, Italy and, possibly, Germany will undermine a consensus for pressuring Russia with sanctions over its actions in Ukraine or for cutting dependence on Russian gas.

More

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-changes-idUSKBN16Z0OC

"The European single currency is bound to fail, economically, politically and indeed socially, though the timing, occasion and full consequences are all necessarily still unclear."

Margaret Thatcher

We close on UK Freedom Day with yet another red flag from America, that all is not well in the US economy, and hasn’t been for some time despite Trumpmania. As go new car sales so goes America, isn’t quite 100 percent, but it’s pretty close. This development wants careful watching. Skies do fall from time to time.

"(A unified) 'Europe' is the result of plans. It is, in fact, a classic utopian project, a monument to the vanity of intellectuals, a programme whose inevitable destiny is failure: only the scale of the final damage done is in doubt."

Margaret Thatcher

New cars are taking longer to sell than they have since 2009

Published: Mar 27, 2017 10:02 p.m. ET

Incentives persist as competition rises for dealers to sell new vehicles

That new car on the dealer’s lot is getting older — fast.

New vehicles in March were sitting on the dealer’s lot for about 70 days, the longest amount of time for any month since July 2009, according to research firms J.D. Power and Associates and LMC Automotive. 

During previous months, new cars hovered in the lot around 65 days, said Jeff Schuster, senior vice president of forecasting at LMC Automotive. It takes dealers about a week longer to sell new cars than it did this time last year, said Michelle Krebs, a senior analyst at used and new car sales site Autotrader.com.

There are a few reasons for the delay: The first, manufacturers have an imbalance in the vehicles they’re producing compared with the vehicles consumers want, Schuster said. More people have become interested in SUVs and manufacturers increased SUV production without decreasing the production of other cars. “Deals on vehicles will still be very strong, and to take that a step farther, with the launch of new vehicles, the competitive pressure is at an all-time high,” Schuster said. The second, the industry might have seen its “peak,” where they’ve seen unprecedented growth in sales that is beginning to level out, Krebs said. And third, people are tightening their purse strings and opting for less expensive vehicles, sometimes in the form of used rental cars.

New-car sales for March are expected to have a 3% increase year-over-year, according to vehicle valuation and consumer resource Kelley Blue Book, and though that is the second highest first quarter on record followed by the first quarter of 2000, it is still likely to finish flat compared to last year because of a weaker demand from consumers. Overall, car sales have been slowing down in recent months. Dealers have been pushing incentives, such as favorable interest rates and cash rebates, Schuster said.

The average new-vehicle price is $31,074 this month, just a few dollars more than it was this time last year at $31,049. Incentive spending, which is how much consumers get in deals, per vehicle was $3,768, a record for the month of March and the highest since March 2009, when it was at a high of $3,609.
More

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/new-cars-are-taking-the-most-time-to-sell-since-2009-2017-03-27

"Adam Smith's 'invisible hand' is not above sudden, disturbing, movements. Since its inception, capitalism has known slumps and recessions, bubble and froth; no one has yet dis-invented the business cycle, and probably no one will; and what Schumpeter famously called the 'gales of creative destruction' still roar mightily from time to time. To lament these things is ultimately to lament the bracing blast of freedom itself."

Margaret Thatcher

At the Comex silver depositories Tuesday final figures were: Registered 41.28 Moz, Eligible 150.21 Moz, Total 191.49 Moz.

Crooks and Scoundrels Corner

The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.

Today some very bad news from Germany. The world’s largest gold coin, has gone missing. Who knew all you needed was a ladder round the back by the railway tracks. My guess, it’s probably on its way to Turkey by now, if not already there.

"Countries trade with each other - or to be more precise people buy and sell from each other across frontiers - because that is the way to advance their interests. We do not need to beg people to trade with us - as long as we have something that people want, of a quality they expect and at a price they are prepared to pay."

Margaret Thatcher

A $4.5 million, giant gold coin was just stolen from a German museum

Published: Mar 28, 2017 3:43 a.m. ET

The coin is in the Guinness Book of World Records

A gold coin weighing in at a whopping 221 pounds was reportedly stolen in the wee hours of Monday morning from Berlin’s Bode Museum.

A spokesman for the museum quoted by the Associated Press said the thieves—likely more than one considering the weight of the coin—broke in through a window at 3:30 a.m., snatched the “Big Maple Leaf” coin from a cabinet, and escaped before police could get there. He also said, without specifying, the coin is on loan from a private collection.

A police spokesman told Reuters that the coin was secured with bulletproof glass and that the thieves got in through the back of the museum by railroad tracks, where a ladder was later found.

The coin is more than an inch thick with a diameter of 21 inches. Its face value is said to be $1 million, but by weight alone, it would bring in almost $4.5 million at market prices. Gold GCJ7, -0.18%  recently took out highs not seen in a month in the wake of GOP leaders’ failure to repeal and replace Obamacare.

The coin, with a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II on one side and a maple leaf on the other, holds a Guinness record for its purity, the AP reported.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/a-45-million-giant-gold-coin-was-just-stolen-from-a-german-museum-2017-03-27

'You just never know. That unpredictability is the great thing about life. You change. The world changes. You live in a country where we are still blessed with enormous opportunity. Leave yourself open to the world of possibility. You have the ambition, you have the smarts and you have the toughness. So, turn the page on your biography - you have just started a new chapter in your lives.'

Lloyd Blankfein, “Mr. Goldman Sacks,” CEO of Goldman Sachs, unintentionally backs Brexit in a speech to US graduates, mid 2016.

Technology Update.

With events happening fast in the development of solar power and graphene, I’ve added this section. Updates as they get reported. Is converting sunlight to usable cheap AC or DC energy mankind’s future from the 21^st century onwards? DC? A quantum computer next?

How graphene could cool smartphone, computer and other electronics chips

Date: March 27, 2017

Source: Rutgers University

Summary: With graphene, researchers have discovered a powerful way to cool tiny chips – key components of electronic devices with billions of transistors apiece.

"You can fit graphene, a very thin, two-dimensional material that can be miniaturized, to cool a hot spot that creates heating problems in your chip, said Eva Y. Andrei, Board of Governors professor of physics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. "This solution doesn't have moving parts and it's quite efficient for cooling."

The shrinking of electronic components and the excessive heat generated by their increasing power has heightened the need for chip-cooling solutions, according to a Rutgers-led study published recently in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Using graphene combined with a boron nitride crystal substrate, the researchers demonstrated a more powerful and efficient cooling mechanism.

"We've achieved a power factor that is about two times higher than in previous thermoelectric coolers," said Andrei, who works in the School of Arts and Sciences.

The power factor refers to the effectiveness of active cooling. That's when an electrical current carries heat away, as shown in this study, while passive cooling is when heat diffuses naturally.

Graphene has major upsides. It's a one-atom-thick layer of graphite, which is the flaky stuff inside a pencil. The thinnest flakes, graphene, consist of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb lattice that looks like chicken wire, Andrei said. It conducts electricity better than copper, is 100 times stronger than steel and quickly diffuses heat.

More

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170327083809.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fmatter_energy%2Fgraphene+%28Graphene+News+--+ScienceDaily%29

"To be free is better than to be unfree - always. Any politician who suggests the opposite should be treated as suspect."

Margaret Thatcher

The monthly Coppock Indicators finished February

DJIA: 20,812  +133 Up. NASDAQ:  5,825 +120 Up. SP500: 2,364 +115 Up.

Brexit Minus One.

Baltic Dry Index. 1282 +42   Brent Crude 51.06

LIR Gold Target in 2019: $30,000.  Revised due to QE programs.

Some people make things happen, some watch while things happen, and some in the EUSSR wonder what happened?

With apologies to Anon.

It is one day before the UK's Great Escape. Finally the Bank of England gets it. The City’s rent seeking, dodgy banksters, might have to banish the worst amongst them to drab Frankfurt, dull Dublin, dangerous, high tax Paris, or the Siberia of Luxembourg. It couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch of thieves. There is a God after all.  When the next Lehman hits or Deutsche Bank’s gambling book blows up, it’ll be the ECB on the hook for what’s left of  banksterism, rather than the BOE and the UK taxpayer.

Mon Mar 27, 2017 | 10:16am EDT

Bank of England to check banks ready for disorderly Brexit

Britain-based banks should take steps to ensure they do not have to curb lending suddenly if the country leaves the European Union in a disorderly way, the Bank of England said on Monday as Prime Minister Theresa May prepares to start Brexit talks.

May has said she is prepared to walk away from the Brexit talks with no deal if only bad terms are offered, and the government has said it is making contingency plans for this "unlikely" scenario.

BoE Governor Mark Carney said in January that the Brexit process was a bigger financial stability risk to EU countries whose businesses relied on raising finance via London than it was to Britain itself.

Just two days before May formally notifies the EU that Britain wants to start two years of exit talks, the BoE asked banks to provide copies of contingency plans to reassure it that they are ready for "a range of possible outcomes".

"Risks to financial stability will be influenced by the orderliness of the adjustment to the new relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union," the BoE's Financial Policy Committee said in its quarterly policy statement.

Carney has said both Britain and the rest of the EU would benefit from a transitional period after Brexit when British-based banks could continue to serve clients elsewhere in Europe on broadly similar terms as at present.

But many banks operating out of London fear they will lose easy access to the EU's single market. Some like Goldman Sachs (GS.N) have already said they will beef up their presence in continental Europe.

The central bank's Financial Policy Committee is asking lenders to show how they can avoid their continental customers being abruptly cut off after Brexit, which could also damage the British economy.

"Sudden adjustment could disrupt the provision of market liquidity and investment banking services," the BoE said.

Longer-term changes to bank business models after Brexit - as well as more complex legal structures - could reduce the resilience of the UK financial system.

Kirsty Barnes, a partner at law firm Gowling WLG, said Britain-based banks could face major restrictions if they did not achieve preferential access to the EU.

"Banks will either have to shift certain operations or business units to the EU or we will see the closure of lines of business and products due to the increased costs or associated inefficiencies that may arise," she said.

More

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-boe-idUSKBN16Y0T2

Let Go of Customs Union During Brexit, Open Europe Advises May

by Jill Ward and Scott Hamilton

27 March 2017, 00:01 BST

If you’re going to quit the European Union, just avoid “half in, half out” arrangements.

That’s the message from think tank Open Europe to U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May, two days before she hands European allies divorce papers. It’s a variation, but for different reason, on what European leaders have been telling her for months: you can’t have your cake and eat it, and no cherry picking.

Staying in the European Union’s customs union is a bad idea, the group says.

Picking a fight to stay in the area where all goods circulate freely would mean the U.K. would have less of a say in striking its own trade deals, including with the EU itself, the group said. There’s no option that would provide completely “friction-less” -- a word often used by May to describe her goal -- movement of goods that Britain currently enjoys with the EU, it said.

“There is a trade-off between minimizing disruption to U.K.-EU trade and ensuring the U.K. is able to shape its own trade policy post-Brexit,” said Aarti Shankar, policy analyst at Open Europe. “Any model that keeps the U.K. ‘half in’ the EU’s customs union would constrain its ability to strike trade deals across the world.”

On Wednesday, May will kick off two years of formal negotiations with 27 EU governments. She still wants tariff-free, friction-less trade with Europe but prioritizes the right to impose immigration limits above all else.

Open Europe says Switzerland could be a model. But that does include freedom of persons, which is anathema to the May government. The report mentions Britain could try to keep deals it has with non-EU countries like the one passed this year between Canada and the EU.

If the U.K. winds up with no deal at all, it would surrender tariff-free trade with the EU’s 440 million consumers, as well as any hope of a transitional phase to adjust. Either way, these things should be dealt with right away.

“Agreement on a transition period is most useful early in the Brexit negotiations to reduce the risk of companies making rushed decisions on changes,” the report said.

British manufacturers take the view that the loss of access to both the single market and the customs union would be unacceptable, the EEF manufacturing lobby said in a separate report. The industry, which accounts for 45 percent of U.K. exports, would see the average tariff for exports to the EU jump by about 5.3 percent under World Trade Organization rules.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-26/let-go-of-customs-union-during-brexit-open-europe-advises-may

But it looks like GB should do just fine in the long run. Free from the dead hand of Brussels and a dying EUSSR, Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” looks set to take care of the UK economy. Britain will resume trading with the rest of the world.

Sun Mar 26, 2017 | 12:37pm EDT

Gulf Arab states push for UK free trade deal after Brexit: officials

Gulf Arab states are pressing for an early deal on free trade with Britain to secure preferential arrangements after Brexit, and could have a draft agreement ready within months, Gulf officials say.

Britain cannot formally sign trade agreements while it remains a member of the European Union, but the British government has said it is keen to start preparatory work so deals can be reached quickly after it leaves.

One of the first agreements could be with the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council, which includes Qatar and the two biggest Arab economies, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman, according to the officials. Trade between Britain and the GCC totals about 30 billion pounds ($37.5 billion) annually.

In a meeting in December with Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond, Qatari finance minister Ali Sherif al-Emadi discussed a partial draft of a free trade deal, a Qatari official said, declining to be named under briefing rules.

GCC states envisage preparing a "signature-ready" deal that could be signed immediately after Brexit, the Qatari official said.

"A free trade agreement with the UK ... This is something we would like to encourage and support," another Gulf official said.

GCC states are trying to diversify their economies and boost non-oil trade after more than two years of low global oil prices that have hurt their finances. They export mainly oil, gas and related products to Western economies while importing a wide range of goods and services.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-gulf-brexit-idUSKBN16X0TS

Qataris to Unveil Major Investments in ‘Global Britain’

by Mohammed Sergie

27 March 2017, 00:01 BST 27 March 2017, 12:03 BST

Qatar said it will invest 5 billion pounds ($6.3 billion) in the U.K. over the next five years, deepening the countries’ trade ties as London prepares to quit the European Union.

“In our last strategy session we committed a big amount of investment in the U.K., especially in infrastructure,” the chief executive officer of the Qatar Investment Authority, Sheikh Abdullah Bin Mohammed Bin Saud Al-Thani, said Monday at an investment forum in London. “There is a pressure from my board to diversify in terms of geography and asset class, but we are still looking, even after Brexit, for opportunities.”

A delegation of more than 400 Qatari officials and business executives, led by the emirate’s prime minister, is visiting London and Birmingham for a two-day meeting with U.K. counterparts, according to Qatari government statements. The visit concludes on Tuesday, a day before U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May plans to start the two-year clock on Brexit negotiations by invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty.

More

https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-03-26/london-s-landlord-to-seal-major-deals-as-brexit-countdown-begins

Below, short Scotland if they ever go independent from the UK. The energy future this century is sun, which Scotland has a dearth of, though plenty of Edinburgh wind.

UAE Sees $192 Billion Savings in Switch to Green Power From Gas

by Brian Parkin and Weixin Zha

27 March 2017, 12:42 BST

The United Arab Emirates forecasts that savings generated by switching half its power needs to clean energy by mid century will outstrip the investment costs.

The Gulf state plans to invest $150 billion in renewable power to 2050, weening the country from dependency on subsidized natural gas power in stages, Minister of Energy Suhail Al-Mazrouei said at a conference in Berlin. Clean energy sources will help it save $192 billion, he said.

The UAE leadership is “bullish” about achieving the goal after realizing that the nation can forgo subsidies in the switch to clean power from LNG, Al-Mazrouei said. Sticking to the strategy will “save the environment and at the same time save us lots of money,” he said.

As the costs for solar power fall rapidly, Gulf and Middle East states are reevaluating their power strategies, which currently rely subsidiaries for electricity generated with liquid natural gas. The UAE has set an “incredibly ambitious” clean power target, starting from scratch just a few years ago, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

In September, Chinese panel maker JinkoSolar Holding Co. and Japanese developer Marubeni Corp. won a tender for a solar plant in Abu Dhabi with a record bid of 2.42 U.S. cents a kilowatt-hour. About $1 billion has been invested in utility-scale solar in the UAE since 2007.

Middle East states need to break their reliance on subsidized gas power, where inefficiencies are endemic in the Middle East, Al-Mazrouei said.

“We have so many open-cycle power plants it doesn’t make sense to continue with them - they’ve very low efficiency,” said the former Abu Dhabi Investment Authority executive. “The reason they are there is because gas is subsidized.”

More

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-27/uae-sees-192-billion-savings-in-switch-to-green-power-from-gas

At the Comex silver depositories Friday final figures were: Registered 40.52 Moz, Eligible 149.64 Moz, Total 190.16 Moz.

Crooks and Scoundrels Corner

The bent, the seriously bent, and the totally doubled over.

Today a subject we covered earlier, but Ambrose covers better. Another very troubling red flag, this time from credit in the USA.

Creditors are a superstitious sect, great observers of set days and times.

Benjamin Franklin.

Fading Trump rally threatened by rare contraction of US credit

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard 26 March 2017 • 3:56pm

Credit strategists are increasingly disturbed by a sudden and rare contraction of US bank lending, fearing a synchronised slowdown in the US and China this year that could catch euphoric markets badly off guard.

One key measure of US corporate borrowing is falling at the fastest rate since the onset of the Lehman Brothers crisis. Money supply growth in the US has also slowed markedly. These monetary and credit signals  tend to be leading indicators for the real economy.

Data from the US Federal Reserve shows that the $2 trillion market for commercial and industrial loans peaked in December. The sector has weakened abruptly as lenders tighten credit, especially for non-residential property. Over the last three months it has dropped at a rate of 5.4pc on annual basis, a pace of decline not seen since December 2008.

The deterioration in the broader $9 trillion market for loans and leases has been less dramatic but it too is shrinking, falling at a 1.6pc rate on a three-month basis. “Corporate lending has ground to a halt and I am staggered that the Fed is raising rates. They have made a very big mistake,” said Patrick Perret-Green from AdMacro.

Credit experts at several big US banks have issued warnings over recent days, albeit sotto voce. "We’ve been surprised how little attention the slowdown in US bank lending has garnered," said Matt King, global credit strategist at Citigroup.

While they are not yet alarmed, their concerns are worth heeding. Credit has tended to pick up signs of trouble several weeks before equity markets in recent episodes of financial stress.

"Without another big dose of momentum, the cracks in the global reflationary consensus are liable to grow bigger. All around, existing trends are being called into question," he said.

Net corporate bond issuance has also stalled, indicating that borrowing by US firms as a whole is in decline. "So much for a Trump-driven expansion. Beneath the surface, we think a seismic battle is taking place," he said.

Elga Bartsch and Chetan Ahya from Morgan Stanley said the credit squeeze is a warning sign and needs watching closely. “On our estimates, the credit impulse turned negative at the end of 2016. We have not seen such a sharp deceleration in bank lending to US corporates since the Great Financial Crisis,” they said.

“Historically, credit downturns have led recessions. The plunge could reignite concerns that a highly leveraged US corporate sector may react strongly to even limited interest rates increases,” they said.

More

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/03/26/sharpest-plunge-credit-since-financial-crisis-could-spell-disaster/?WT.mc_id=e_DM391327&WT.tsrc=email&etype=Edi_Cit_New_AEM_Daily&utm_source=email&utm_medium=Edi_Cit_New_AEM_Daily_2017_03_27&utm_campaign=DM391327

Over a long weekend, I could teach my dog to be an investment banker.

Herbert A. Allen. President of Allen & Company.

Technology Update.

With events happening fast in the development of solar power and graphene, I’ve added this section. Updates as they get reported. Is converting sunlight to usable cheap AC or DC energy mankind’s future from the 21^st century onwards? DC? A quantum computer next?

Self-healing graphene holds promise for artificial skin in future robots

Date: March 21, 2017

Source: De Gruyter Open

Summary: A new study offers a novel solution where a sub-nano sensor uses graphene to sense a crack as soon as it starts nucleation, or after the crack has spread a certain distance. This technology could quickly become viable for use in the next generation of electronics.

With the first ever documented observation of the self-healing phenomena of graphene, researchers from Hyderabad, India, hint at future applications for its use in artificial skin.

Graphene, which is, in simple terms, a sheet of pure carbon atoms and currently the world's strongest material, is one million times thinner than paper; so thin that it is actually considered two dimensional. Notwithstanding its hefty price, graphene has quickly become a comer among the most promising nanomaterials due to its unique properties and versatile prospective applications.

The paper by published in Open Physics refers to an extraordinary yet previously undocumented self-healing property of graphene's, which could lead to the development of flexible sensors that mimic the self-healing properties of human skin.

The largest organ in the human body, skin has been known for its fascinating self-healing properties -- but until now, emulating this phenomenon proved too much of a challenge as humanmade materials lack this ability. Due to unprecedented stretching or bending and incidental scratches, artificial skin used in robots is extremely susceptible to ruptures and fissures. The study offers a novel solution where a sub-nano sensor uses graphene to sense a crack as soon as it starts nucleation, and surprisingly, even after the crack has spread a certain distance. This technology could quickly become viable for use in the next generation of electronics.

"We wanted to observe the self-healing behavior of both pristine and defected single layer graphene and its application in sub-nano sensors for crack spotting by using molecular dynamic simulation." Says Dr. Swati Ghosh Acharyya, the main author of the article. She continues: "We were able to document the self-healing of cracks in graphene without the presence of any external stimulus and at room temperature." The results revealed that self-healing occurred by spontaneous recombination of the dangling bonds whenever within the limit of critical crack opening displacement.

The researchers subjected single layer graphene containing various defects like pre-existing vacancies and differently oriented pre-existing cracks to uniaxial tensile loading till fracture. Interestingly enough, once the load was relaxed, the graphene started to heal and the self-healing continued irrespective of the nature of pre-existing defects in the graphene sheet. No matter what length of the crack, they all healed, provided the critical crack opening distance lied within 0.3 -- 0.5 nm for both the pristine sheet as well as for the sheet with pre-existing defects.

Simulating self-healing in artificial skin will open the way to a variety of daily life applications ranging from sensors, through to mobile devices and ultracapacitors.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170321125011.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fmatter_energy%2Fgraphene+%28Graphene+News+--+ScienceDaily%29

The monthly Coppock Indicators finished February

DJIA: 20,812  +133 Up. NASDAQ:  5,825 +120 Up. SP500: 2,364 +115 Up.