The GRAPHENE mega thread - because it's technology you need to know about!

Lots of Graphene related patent applications from LM:

stks.freshpatents.com...

www.youtube.com...

Keep up the good work.
is there any thing you can not do with this?
I brush my teeth with it! but I can not get them white?

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: yuppa

Does it cure cancer too?

ask the B2pilots about their wings using it. and sure it can prolly be made to filter cancer cells in blood. the stuff is lighter than titanum and conductive. perfect for gravity resistance under main power.

originally posted by: yuppa

originally posted by: Azureblue
a reply to: Thermo Klein

when is it coming onto the market, how much will it cost and what tools would be requried to work with it.

its what black triangles are made of. one way they cloak is by bending light with the graphene skin.

Intersting to the least

a reply to: pavil

Here is a company in Provo, Utah, that has proven the chemistry of taking CO2 from the atmosphere and creating carbon products and the waste by-product, water!

"He [Dallas Noyes, chemical and mechanical engineer] said, 'There's got to be a cheap way to do it because carbon is cheap and it's everywhere!'" she said. "So like all good innovators, we built a lab in the basement of the house" and began to tackle the problem. Four months later, they had produced their first carbon nanotubes.

"What that means is we can fundamentally change material science and we can take a bite out of climate change," she said.

In 2009, the couple founded Solid Carbon Products, still drawing inspiration by their son’s deployment to the Middle East as an Army Ranger and the desire to find a method of producing high-strength carbon to supply better armor to soldiers in the battlefield, Quance said.

...

"We can make nanoscale carbons affordably," she said. "By converting (waste carbon dioxide), we are providing at a very low cost, high-value materials that serve as performance reinforcements in plastics, resins, steel, aluminum (and) rubber."

Deseretnews.com, Oct. 2017 - Provo company's innovation could solve 2 environmental issues.

These guys (Dallas Noyes passed away a few years ago so this means "their company") are at the "scale up" stage. They are looking for about $30 million for a scale plant up and running.

All the others doing this are part of the Carbon X Prize competition which is more of a feasibility study. The guys making CNTs will attach a collector at the end of a gas flue stack (electricity generation), use some of the electricity and a catalyst to convert the waste CO2 to CNTs. These guys have already done it, have patents, and clearance from the EPA to drop the water produced as "surface water". You can go over to their house and take a tour of their lab!

Nano carbon additives and pure water while scrubbing the atmosphere! That is true innovation.

a reply to: Phage
and
a reply to: SprocketUK

The mesothelioma caused by long carbon nanotubes mice was in many ways similar to tumor samples from patients.

The investigators stress that the danger is posed only by types of nanomaterials that are long, thin, and biopersistent—meaning that they are not broken down inside the body: "these long, thin nanotubes are very similar to asbestos in their structural and physical characteristics," MacFarlane says. "The immune system does a good job of recognizing nanotubes that are shorter, thicker, or tangled up. They can be phagocytized by macrophages and cleared out of the body."

phys.org - Subset of carbon nanotubes poses cancer risk similar to asbestos in mice.

and, First use of graphene to detect cancer cells.

The longer chain CNTs are similar to asbestos and causes the same problems.

Graphene on the other hand is good at detecting cancer. Since, as stated in the first article above, the body does well with the shorter strands, there is talk about using CNTs as a targeted drug delivery system. They are especially interested in cancer cells.

CNTs, both a cure and a cause. Graphene, while it does not cure cancer, it is a great detector of cancerous cells.

In detail, the team guided by Pat Thiel, an Ames Lab scientist and Distinguished Professor at Iowa State University, encapsulated dysprosium, a magnetic rare-earth metal, by bombarding the top layer of bulk graphite with ions to create defects on its surface, followed by high-temperature deposition of the metal. This resulted in “mesas” or islands of dysprosium underneath a single layer of graphene, a press release issued by the Lab explains. "The formations are significantly different than anything the Laboratory’s two-dimensional materials experts have ever seen," the statement adds.

Research Assistant Ann Lii-Rosales said that these mesas form at the top graphite surface only, and they are pure metal composed of multilayers, which is a first. On top of that, the scientists are now exploring the combined properties of the metal plus graphene, which may be very different than other, previously produced materials.
...

The researchers were also able to achieve the same mesa-like formations with ruthenium and copper.

mining.com, Dec. 19, 2017 - Rare earth metal exposes new properties of graphene.

I only really know about that element from the Elements song, "dysprosium, holmium, and erbium..."!!

Google says it has a high thermal neutron absorption and is used in control rods in nuclear reactors.

Ah! I see.

While looking to encapsulate rare earth minerals (dysprosium is not found as a free element in nature), and probably add to their life times, strength, etc., they turned to the wonder material graphene. Their description reminds me of egg cartons with the graphene being the part sticking up and the pure metal sitting where the eggs would be.

That is strange and cool! I wonder what kind of other combinations they can make? And what uses they can be put to!

“Previously, when we tested graphite or a single atomic layer of graphene, we would apply pressure and feel a very soft film,” explained Elisa Riedo, professor of physics at the ASRC and lead project researcher, on the research center’s website. “But when the graphite film was exactly two-layers thick, all of a sudden we realized that the material under pressure was becoming extremely hard and as stiff, or stiffer, than bulk diamond.”

...

It will be interesting to see how this impacts the future of warfare. Soldiers wearing lightweight armor that makes them almost impervious to bullets would likely cause militaries around the world to shift to other weaponry. We know the United States is looking at laser weapons, while Russia is reportedly designing a missile controlled by artificial intelligence. Ironically, effective bullet-proof armor won’t count for much if no one’s using bullets anymore.

futurism.com, Dec. 21, 2017 - Two Layers of Graphene Make Diamond-Hard Armor That Can Stop a Bullet.

That only works with 2 layers. They tried adding more (more is always better, right?) but it did not work. The two-layers of graphene has been given a new name: diamene.

Sorry about being late to the party! This should have been added last year but the Holidays and all... Happy New Year!

a reply to: Thermo Klein

If it can take the strain, stress and loads exerted by say the likes of use in the construction of a space elevator cable/tether, and can be mass produced to accommodate the construction od such, then the sky really is the limit for this wondrous material.

The ORNL-led research team used the latter method—known as chemical vapor deposition, or CVD—but with a twist. In a study published in Nature Materials, they explained how localized control of the CVD process allows evolutionary, or self-selecting, growth under optimal conditions, yielding a large, single-crystal-like sheet of graphene.

Much like traditional CVD approaches to produce graphene, the researchers sprayed a gaseous mixture of hydrocarbon precursor molecules onto a metallic, polycrystalline foil. However, they carefully controlled the local deposition of the hydrocarbon molecules, bringing them directly to the edge of the emerging graphene film. As the substrate moved underneath, the carbon atoms continuously assembled as a single crystal of graphene up to a foot in length.

"The unencumbered single-crystal-like graphene growth can go almost continuously, as a roll-to-roll and beyond the foot-long samples demonstrated here," said Sergei Smirnov, coauthor and New Mexico State University professor.

Phys.org, March 12, 2018 - Method to grow large single-crystal graphene could advance scalable 2-D materials.

Way to go Oak Ridge National Laboratory! How long has it been since we heard about the "wonder material" graphene and what can happen roll-to-roll production happens?! The great thing is that the substrate does not have to be aligned in a certain direction to get the pre-cursor to line up.

So they spray a bit down, on the hot substrate, it starts to grow into a graphene island, they just keep adding more hydrocarbon near by. As the crystal grows, they move the whole substrate and add more to make more. If they don't spray too far ahead, the carbon lines itself up to the largest growing graphene island. They have done over a foot!

And carbon is just the beginning. They figure other CVD manufactured 2D materials can also be made this way.

Is this the big breakthrough in graphene manufacturing that has been holding it back??

The conventional method of producing graphene utilises sound energy or shearing forces to exfoliate graphene layers from graphite, and then dispersing the layers in large amounts of organic solvent. As insufficient solvent causes the graphene layers to reattach themselves back into graphite, yielding one kilogram of graphene currently requires at least one tonne of organic solvent, making the method costly and environmentally unfriendly.

The NUS-led development research team, on the other hand, uses up to 50 times less solvent. This is achieved by exfoliating pre-treated graphite under a highly alkaline condition to trigger flocculation, a process in which the graphene layers continuously cluster together to form graphene slurry without having to increase the volume of solvent. The method also introduces electrostatic repulsive forces between the graphene layers and prevents them from reattaching themselves.

phys.org, April 4, 2018 - Research team develops cost-effective technique for mass production of high-quality graphene.

Flocculation is clumping together and falling out of solution. The graphene flakes do not clump back into graphite but are separate and suspended in solution. You then can use that for applications like ink printing.

I know about flocculation from brewing beer! The yeast, after eating the sugars do the same thing: clump together and fallout of the beer to the bottom of the fermenting vessel. You take the beer off of the yeast after primary fermentation so they do not start to cannibalize themselves which makes your beer go bad. In secondary fermentation, the flocculation continues until you are left with a nice, hoppy, clear, flat beer. Pop that puppy in a soda keg, add CO2, cool it down some, and in two days, an IPA that you made!

phys.org, April 12, 2018 - Oxidative unzipping of multiwall carbon nanotubes to graphene nanoribbons.

This is an article explaining where issues have arisen in exfoliating multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) down to graphene ribbons. Each step is explained in detail that may be too much but the end result is this, MWCNTs were theoretically stripped down to graphene nanoribbons of a specific size, then demonstrated that the theory was right by actually demonstrating the process. Instead of trying to make graphene nanoribbons (GNR) from graphene upwards, they can take CNTs and chemically process them down to GNRs.

The process keeps the size uniform which means future applications in electronic devices.

Transmission lines: A new report from Navigant Research examines the global utility market for carbon nanotubes (CNTs), highlighting significant CNT characteristics and challenges for grid integration, as well as providing recommendations for utilities, vendors, and research labs.

CNTs, small tubes composed of carbon atoms, are ideal for transmission network cables and wiring. Due to their physical and chemical properties, they offer an extremely high strength-to-weight ratio and superior conductivity, however, high costs and other challenges have so far deterred adoption. According to a new report from NavigantRSRCH, CNT market players can work to change this by prioritizing scientific development and building strong relationships among market contributors.

“The utility industry stands to benefit tremendously from the conductivity and strength-to-weight characteristics of CNTs, as the tubes could be integrated into transmission and distribution (T&D) networks to enhance power delivery efficiency and reliability,” says Michael Hartnack, research analyst with Navigant Research. “With the right strategies, key players in the CNT market have the potential to improve transmission network efficiency and reliability.”

utilityproducts.com, April 2018 - Transmission lines: Carbon nanotubes have potential to improve transmission network efficiency, reliability.

This is more radical and where TEOT goes full on Tin Foil Hat! I'll try to explain.

TEOT's pet theory of the three legs of nuclear fusion power: nuclear fusion reactor, energy storage, and energy transmission.

Fusion reactor: Lockheed Martin's CFR announcement in 2014. Energy Storage: US has it in the works for creating a vanadium mining operation with the express goal of making vanadium pentaoxide for redox flow batteries. Now this "announcement" about strategery to upgrade power lines with CNTs.

And it is not even "that crazy" but rather practical in nature.

Heck, they can use GNRs now too!

The team’s setup combines a roll-to-roll approach — a common industrial approach for continuous processing of thin foils — with the common graphene-fabrication technique of chemical vapor deposition, to manufacture high-quality graphene in large quantities and at a high rate. The system consists of two spools, connected by a conveyor belt that runs through a small furnace. The first spool unfurls a long strip of copper foil, less than 1 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.

“Graphene starts forming in little islands, and then those islands grow together to form a continuous sheet,” Hart says. “By the time it’s out of the oven, the graphene should be fully covering the foil in one layer, kind of like a continuous bed of pizza.”

As the graphene exits the furnace, it’s rolled onto the second spool. The researchers found that they were able to feed the foil continuously through the system, producing high-quality graphene at a rate of 5 centimers per minute. Their longest run lasted almost four hours, during which they produced about 10 meters of continuous graphene.

“If this were in a factory, it would be running 24-7,” Hart says. “You would have big spools of foil feeding through, like a printing press.”

MIT.edu, news, April 17, 2018 - A graphene roll-out.

YouTube video - Roll-to-roll graphene CVD for atomically thin membranes


Is this it??!! Is this when graphene finally leaves the lab and all the hyped uses and speculation to enter the real world??

Porous membranes will have all kinds of uses! You can filter out the tritium in the water at Fukushima and only release non-contaminated sea water back into the Pacific. You can filter water at the same rate as reverse osmosis but use less energy. Desalination. Heck, even those pesky micro plastics can be cleaned out! That is just water!

The article goes on to say, they transferred the graphene onto a polymer that has larger pores than the graphene. They tested different materials and flow rates and found the roll-to-roll membranes' performance, "comparable to graphene membranes made using conventional, small batch approaches" (same source).

A huge break through in making roll-to-roll graphene!!

"This new composite material is an absolute game-changer in terms of reinforcing traditional concrete to meets these needs. Not only is it stronger and more durable, but it is also more resistant to water, making it uniquely suitable for construction in areas which require maintenance work and are difficult to be accessed .

“Yet perhaps more importantly, by including graphene we can reduce the amount of materials required to make concrete by around 50 per cent - leading to a significant reduction of 446kg/tonne of the carbon emissions.

“This unprecedented range of functionalities and properties uncovered are an important step in encouraging a more sustainable, environmentally-friendly construction industry worldwide.”

Previous work on using nanotechnology has concentrated on modifying existing components of cement, one of the main elements of concrete production.

In the innovative new study, the research team has created a new technique that centres on suspending atomically thin graphene in water with high yield and no defects, low cost and compatible with modern, large scale manufacturing requirements.

University of Exeter (exter.ac.uk), April 23, 2018 - Scientists create innovative new ‘green’ concrete using graphene.

Dumping graphene into cement was thought about but they could not uniformly distribute it (graphene likes to clump together and turn back into graphite). Looks like they found a way to suspend it in water without much changes to current manufacturing methods. That allowed a reduction in the amount of cement needed, which when running the numbers forward, leads to the amount of CO2 not released into the atmosphere.

Wikipedia says concrete production contributes 5% of global annual emissions of CO2. A reduction of that amount (50%) would be a major win for environmentalist and people who like to see a cleaner world in general. Keeping that much CO2 from even entering the atmosphere means you have less work to do after it does reach the atmosphere.

Now if we can get MIT to make sheets we can line cargo ships with to keep their emissions down too, well then we would be doing something worth being proud of!

The reason? Carbon nanotubes are notoriously tricky to process -- especially in large quantities. About 10,000 times thinner than a human hair, the wiry, tube-shaped structures are said to be stronger than steel and conduct heat and electricity far better than copper. But when mass produced -- usually in the form of powders -- the tubes twist and clump together. This complication is a major barrier to the material's widespread applications.

...

By contrast, Huang's team [Northwestern University] found that cresol does not deteriorate carbon nanotubes' surface functions. And, after separating the entangled tubes, researchers can simply remove the chemical by washing it off or heating it until it evaporates.

...As the concentration of carbon nanotubes increases, the material transitions from a dilute dispersion to a spreadable paste to a free-standing gel and finally to a kneadable dough. These various forms can be molded, reshaped or used as conductive ink for 3D printing.

"The dough state of nanotubes is fascinating," said Kevin Chiou, a graduate student in Huang's laboratory and first author of the paper. "It can be readily shaped and molded into arbitrary structures just like playdough."

R&D magazine (rdmag.com), May 16, 2018 - Making Carbon Nanotubes as Usable as Common Plastics.

Cresols are precursors or synthetic intermediates to other compounds and materials, including plastics, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, and dyes.

Most recently, cresols have been used to create a breakthrough in manufacturing carbon nanotubes at scale that are separated and not twisted, without additional chemicals that change the surface properties of the nanotubes according to sciencedaily.com.

Wikipedia: Cresol.

Cresole comes from creosote which you may know as that stuff that can catch fire in your fireplace flue unless Bert and the kids come by and sweep it out!

They already created cresole at industrial scales. Now that you can concentrate carbon nanotubes (CNTs) into it and make Play-Doh (hehehe, Play-D'oh!) with CNTs, how long until graphene is shown the same treatment??

The 3D printing aspect is pretty intriguing too! If I had to guess, this may be huge in lithium ion batteries. Or combine with the "unzipping of CNTs to graphene ribbons" (posted earlier), then make graphene ribbon play-doh!

This may make the jump from research to real world applications happen faster than anybody would have guessed before!

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: yuppa

Does it cure cancer too?

The other groundbreaking benefit of optical graphene stimulation is the ability to nuke cancerous cells without damaging neighboring healthy cells. According to the study, the electrical resting potential (ERP) of cancer cells is normally lower than healthy body cells.

This implies that the cancerous cells are more vulnerable to electrical stimulation that opens their ion channels. Exposing the malignant cells to such a lethal influx of ions for a sufficiently long period can kill them completely without harming the healthy cells in the vicinity.

Fossbytes.com - Cancer Cells Could Be Killed By Graphene “Optical Stimulation”.

By itself it does no cure cancer. But in converting light to electricity it can used to kill cancer cells. So, in a way, "yes"!

Grolltex, short for ‘graphene-rolling-technologies’, uses patented research and techniques initially developed at the University of California, San Diego, to produce high quality, single layer graphene, hexagonal Boron Nitride and other 2D materials and products. The company is a practitioner of, and specializes in, exclusively sustainable graphene production methods and is committed to advancing the field of graphene to improve the future of leading edge materials science and product design through the optimization of single atom thick materials.

The company began shipping the new material to pre-qualified customers in May and is now selling large area mono layer hBN to the public, in both ‘standalone’ and ‘layered with graphene’ configurations. Additionally, Grolltex is providing ‘hBN on your substrate’ as a service to device makers.

AreaDevelopment.com, June 28, 2018 - Grolltex Opens Graphene Manufacturing Complex in San Diego, California.

I never heard of these guys before. I guess this is kind of a shock but that is OK.

They are not making just graphene but also making hexagonal boron nitride (aka, white graphene). They get combined together because they are a natural fit. Graphene protects the hBN from oxidation while hBN gives an atomic layer for graphene without having to use some other substrate. They create a Van der waal's heterostructure and naturally enhance the favorable properties for each. hBN is a semiconductor and graphene a great conductor so it will be interesting to see what applications Grolltex's customers use this for!

Why stop at one 2D product when you can make two!!

Lookie lookie:

www.sciencedaily.com...

3d printed layers of 2d graphene.

Previously, researchers could only print this material, known as graphene, in 2D sheets or basic structures. But engineers have now 3-D printed graphene objects at a resolution an order of magnitude greater than ever before printed, which unlocks the ability to theoretically create any size or shape of graphene.

Seems nice enough...

BSI, the business standards company, has published a new guide to the properties of graphene flakes, PAS 1201. The guide, which is free to download, provides an explanation of the physical and chemical properties of graphene flakes, and advice on information manufacturers and suppliers of graphene should give to prospective users.

PAS 1201:2018 Properties of Graphene Flakes – guide was sponsored by Innovate UK. The following organizations were also involved in its development as members of the Steering group: BAE Systems; Cambridge Nanomaterials Technology Ltd; Centre for Process Innovation Limited; DZP Technologies Ltd; Haydale; Iceni Labs Limited; Knowledge Transfer Network; National Physical Laboratory (NPL); PVI Industries; Thomas Swan & Co. Ltd; University of Warwick; Versarien plc.

BSIGroup.com, Sept. 5, 2018 - B SI launches new guide for graphene, the 2D ‘wonder material’.

Totally boring, right? British Standards Institute Institution issues guidelines for accepted uses and standards for various products. What is interesting to note is the following disclaimer:

NOTE: This PAS does not cover related graphene forms such as graphene oxide (GO) graphene sheet and graphene hybrids. Nor does it cover the properties or performance of formulations and intermediates containing graphene flakes.

BSI Shop, PAS1201 download page.

I wonder if they will do one for GO and rGO as they too have useful applications. Look at all the heavy hitters: BAE, Haydale, Cambridge Nano Tech.

This may be really boring but it is the first step in full scale manufacturing and world wide adoption! Graphene is stepping out of the lab and into end-user products!! Finally!!