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posted by martyb on Tuesday May 19 2015, @02:47PM   Printer-friendly
from the bigger-is-better dept.

A team at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has demonstrated a method for creating lots of graphene:

One of the barriers to using graphene at a commercial scale could be overcome using a method demonstrated by researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Graphene, a material stronger and stiffer than carbon fiber, has enormous commercial potential but has been impractical to employ on a large scale, with researchers limited to using small flakes of the material.

Now, using chemical vapor deposition, a team led by ORNL's Ivan Vlassiouk has fabricated polymer composites containing 2-inch-by-2-inch sheets of the one-atom thick hexagonally arranged carbon atoms. The findings, reported in the journal Applied Materials & Interfaces, could help usher in a new era in flexible electronics and change the way this reinforcing material is viewed and ultimately used.

"Before our work, superb mechanical properties of graphene were shown at a micro scale," said Vlassiouk, a member of ORNL's Energy and Transportation Science Division. "We have extended this to a larger scale, which considerably extends the potential applications and market for graphene." While most approaches for polymer nanocomposition construction employ tiny flakes of graphene or other carbon nanomaterials that are difficult to disperse in the polymer, Vlassiouk's team used larger sheets of graphene. This eliminates the flake dispersion and agglomeration problems and allows the material to better conduct electricity with less actual graphene in the polymer. "In our case, we were able to use chemical vapor deposition to make a nanocomposite laminate that is electrically conductive with graphene loading that is 50 times less compared to current state-of-the-art samples," Vlassiouk said. This is a key to making the material competitive on the market.

If Vlassiouk and his team can reduce the cost and demonstrate scalability, researchers envision graphene being used in aerospace (structural monitoring, flame-retardants, anti-icing, conductive), the automotive sector (catalysts, wear-resistant coatings), structural applications (self-cleaning coatings, temperature control materials), electronics (displays, printed electronics, thermal management), energy (photovoltaics, filtration, energy storage) and manufacturing (catalysts, barrier coatings, filtration).

Carbon Sciences, Inc. and the University of California, Santa Barbara also announced "the production of high quality graphene using a low cost chemical vapor deposition process." Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and ORNL announced a technique to seal holes in graphene layers earlier this month.

 
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  • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday May 19 2015, @04:46PM

    by kaszz (4211) on Tuesday May 19 2015, @04:46PM (#185128) Journal

    I don't understand why we are not pumping lots more money into space elevator research.

    Because the catch is that nano technology is needed to make the cable that will hold it together. Once that is solved.. voila!

    (don't forget the IPO, government, speculation, DoD, hey it may destroy our business model etc)

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