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MIT Discovers Way To Mass-Produce Graphene In Large Sheets (inhabitat.com)
New submitter Paige.Bennett writes: Up till now, graphene has been produced in small batches in labs. But MIT just found a way to mass-produce graphene in large sheets using a process that rolls out five centimeters of graphene each minute. The longest span so far was nearly four hours, which produced about 10 meters of graphene. According to MIT, here's how their conveyor belt system works: "The first spool unfurls a long strip of copper foil, less than one centimeter wide. When it enters the furnace, the foil is fed through first one tube and then another, in a 'split-zone' design. While the foil rolls through the first tube, it heats up to a certain ideal temperature, at which point it is ready to roll through the second tube, where the scientists pump in a specified ratio of methane and hydrogen gas, which are deposited onto the heated foil to produce graphene." The work has been published in the journal Materials and Interfaces.
Now, finally, we can manufacture it in large enough quantities to worry about environmental problems!
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I'm a nanotechnologist. Actually, I founded a graphene chip company that actually has a product and customers (Nanomedical Diagnostics).
There are two companies that already produce graphene roll to roll like this (Samsung and Grolltex). Not surprisingly, there's not much of a market for it. There are far fewer people working on graphene applications than on developing the raw material.
There are a few reasons for this. First, investment in commercialization of graphene applications is not popular (because market research is a necessary skill to pitch a product - not so much with a commodity). Second, devices and applications are just harder to make. Most people in my field don't want to work on the kinds of problems that are common in manufacturing (or if they do, they go work for Intel).
The result of all this is that it's actually very easy for someone like me to grow my own graphene (growth tech and know-how is cheap), and it's very hard for a graphene growth company to demonstrate applicability (meeting real industrial cost or QA targets).
In short, a third source of graphene of this type is not needed.
I am surprised it has taken so long to actually get graphene production up to meaningful levels given the potential uses for the material.
One would think that its potential to drastically increase the output while decreasing the energy requirements for desalinization alone would have have spurred more development.
Not to mention fast charging batteries, insulation, structural components in cars and aircraft, solar cells and tons of other pretty important things.
Would be nice to have super light weight cars.