Some of the more intriguing meteorites are partly composed of carbon-based materials, including amino acids and sugars.

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About the same size as fine particles of cigarette smoke, the grains are made of silicate minerals and carbon-based materials coated with ice - principally water ice and frozen carbon monoxide.

BBC: University of Nottingham

Other research projects in the field of artificial retinas are currently focusing on carbon-based materials like nanocrystalline diamond and graphene, but those are intended for replacing silicon electrodes, like the Argus 2.

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Well, after scooping up some loose sand, Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) suite and the Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instruments found a menagerie of chemicals, including sulfur, chlorine, and traces of carbon-based materials.

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These include Yuri Suzuki, a materials scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, who is building stacks of metal oxides in the hopes that, when combined with carbon-based materials, they'll blend into a new kind of semiconductor that can control spin at normal temperatures.

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The family of these materials includes much-touted, carbon-based members such as graphene and nanotubes, and are notable in part for their surface area-to-weight ratio.

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To be sure, increasingly capacious chemistry and materials are used to improve the capabilities of batteries such as switching from carbon-based anodes to silicon-based ones.

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