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Phoenix666 [soylentnews.org] writes:

graphene's unique intrinsic properties -- supreme electrical and thermal conductivities and remarkable electron mobility, to name just a few -- can only be fully realized if it is grown free from defects that disrupt the honeycomb pattern of the bound carbon atoms.

A team led by Materials Scientist Anirudha Sumant with the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory's Center for Nanoscale Materials (CNM) and Materials Science Division, along with collaborators at the University of California-Riverside, has developed a method to grow graphene that contains relatively few impurities and costs less to make, in a shorter time and at lower temperatures compared to the processes widely used to make graphene today [sciencedaily.com].
...
"I'd been dealing with all these different techniques of growing graphene, and you never see such a uniform, smooth surface."

The new technology taps ultrananocrystalline diamond (UNCD), a synthetic type of diamond that Argonne researchers have pioneered through years of research. UNCD serves as a physical substrate, or surface on which the graphene grows, and the source for the carbon atoms that make up a rapidly produced graphene sheet.

The first one to perfect defect-free graphene will be a trillionaire.

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