Chen Chen analyzed the powder left after the black crystal was smashed with an electron microscope.
The result was no surprise. The powder consisted of countless fragments of single-layer carbon sheets, with nothing else present.
In other words, the black crystal was simply an artificial diamond made by stacking countless layers of graphene.
Of course, although the material that made up the black crystal was the same as diamond, its value was beyond anything a diamond could compare to.
Graphene was essentially ordinary graphite, only much thinner. It consisted of carbon atoms arranged in a tightly packed, periodic honeycomb lattice.
It had been discovered in 2004 at the University of Manchester, UK. Graphene had outstanding optical, electrical, and mechanical properties, and was considered a revolutionary material of the future.
A piece of graphite about one millimeter thick could be peeled into three million layers of graphene.
Single-layer graphene referred to a sheet just one atom thick. Because it was so thin, many people considered it completely two-dimensional.
The black crystal, then, was actually made by stacking tens of millions of graphene layers, etching circuits into each one, and ultimately forming hundreds of billions of transistors.
Thanks to graphene's stability, the transistors could operate reliably at nearly the scale of individual atoms, and were far more efficient than ordinary transistors. At the same volume, a graphene processor could perform calculations millions of times more efficiently than a modern computer processor.
What's more, graphene was flexible, biocompatible, and highly conductive, making it an excellent material for neural interface electrodes. Graphene electrodes were more stable inside the body than tungsten or silicon electrodes.
Even so, modifying the chip wasn't something that could be done by conventional means.
Chen Chen thought it over, then turned off the signal-blocking device and picked up his phone