Full disclosure time, since I got full of myself and stepped into this one...... my schooling was for physical chemistry, which is basically physics on an atomic and molecular level (read: no applicability to anything practical).
As part of graduate studies, you do have to take exams to prove some level of knowledge in different areas of chemistry. The most relevant here would be inorganic chemistry....... I passed that exam by literally one point. But hey, I passed.
Perhaps they have Graphene and Carbon(another of the type that is not Graphene) diaphragm layers and are being cute with Carbenes
Yes, this definitely sounds like a marketing thing because graphene and nanomaterials are buzz words right now. They surely have carbon in them...... as do you and I, and my dogs, and all plants and animals..... carbon is the building block of life!
Graphene is an allotrope of carbon, meaning that it is a bunch of carbon atoms that are connected to each other in a specific structure. You've probably heard of bucky balls....... that is another allotrope of carbon, in which all the carbons are bound together in a form that looks like a soccer ball. With graphene, all the carbons bind together to form hexagons, which are connected to other hexagons made of carbon, forming a thin layer that looks like a honey comb. So strictly speaking, all these drivers contain carbon, but in order to say that the drivers are graphene or carbene, they should contain carbon atoms in specific structures.
Hope you would chime in as well on earbuds that claim to have graphene drivers. This exotic, difficult to manufacture material supposedly in $10 earbuds?
My understanding of the graphene drivers (which is largely based on info from this thread) is that whatever drivers they used are sprayed with graphene, so the graphene content is actually pretty low. But I guess this is enough to advertise a driver as graphene. In the case of "carbene," I think it is total BS because carbene is not stable at room temp - it will react to make something like ethylene, which is a gas, so by the time the earbuds reach you, it will already have wandered off.
Sorry for the lecture. Thanks to anyone who stuck with me....... it is fun to pretend that all that schooling didn't go to waste.
Edited to say: I hope I am not being a snot or a drag with this chemistry stuff. I was just talking to my husband about this (who is an organic chemist, so knows a lot more about this stuff that I do.....) and how my post would come across...... I just don't want someone spending their hard earned money thinking that they are getting a new driver material that will be different if that will not be the case. With this carbene stuff, I think it really is the case of someone using a term that sounds high tech to sell market a product. They may be great earbuds, but advertising them as carbene is deceptive.
Carbenes have unpaired electrons so are not stable. They will react and form something else. They are intermediates to make other stuff, there is no way the final driver will be made of carbenes.
