Graphene production techniques

A rapidly increasing list of graphene production techniques have been developed to enable graphene's use in commercial applications.Fundamental forces place seemingly insurmountable barriers in the way of creating ... The nascent 2D crystallites try to minimize their surface energy and inevitably morph into one of the rich variety of stable 3D structures that occur in soot. A rapidly increasing list of graphene production techniques have been developed to enable graphene's use in commercial applications. Isolated 2D crystals cannot be grown via chemical synthesis beyond small sizes even in principle, because the rapid growth of phonon density with increasing lateral size forces 2D crystallites to bend into the third dimension. However, other routes to 2d materials exist: The early approaches of cleaving multi-layer graphite into single layers or growing it epitaxially by depositing a layer of carbon onto another material have been supplemented by numerous alternatives. In all cases, the graphite must bond to some substrate to retain its 2d shape. As of 2014 exfoliation produced graphene with the lowest number of defects and highest electron mobility. Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov initially used adhesive tape to split graphite into graphene. Achieving single layers typically requires multiple exfoliation steps, each producing a slice with fewer layers, until only one remains. After exfoliation the flakes are deposited on a silicon wafer. Crystallites larger than 1 mm and visible to the naked eye can be obtained. In this method, a sharp single-crystal diamond wedge penetrates onto the graphite source to exfoliate layers. This method uses highly ordered pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) as the starting material. The experiments were supported by molecular dynamic simulations. P. Boehm reported producing monolayer flakes of reduced graphene oxide in 1962. Rapid heating of graphite oxide and exfoliation yields highly dispersed carbon powder with a few percent of graphene flakes. Reduction of graphite oxide monolayer films, e.g. by hydrazine with annealing in argon/hydrogen also yielded graphene films. Later the oxidation protocol was enhanced to yield graphene oxide with an almost intact carbon framework that allows efficient removal of functional groups, neither of which was originally possible. The measured charge carrier mobility exceeded 1,000 centimetres (393.70 in)/Vs. Spectroscopic analysis of reduced graphene oxide has been conducted. In 2014 defect-free, unoxidized graphene-containing liquids were made from graphite using mixers that produce local shear rates greater than 10×104. The method was claimed to be applicable to other 2D materials, including boron nitride, Molybdenum disulfide and other layered crystals. Dispersing graphite in a proper liquid medium can produce graphene by sonication. Graphene is separated from graphite by centrifugation, producing graphene concentrations initially up to 0.01 mg/ml in N-methylpyrrolidone (NMP) and later to 2.1 mg/ml in NMP,. Using a suitable ionic liquid as the dispersing liquid medium produced concentrations of 5.33 mg/ml. Graphene concentration produced by this method is very low, because nothing prevents the sheets from restacking due to van der Waals forces. The maximum concentrations achieved are the points at which the van der Waals forces overcome the interactive forces between the graphene sheets and the solvent molecules.