Researchers at Rice University report that they can zap virtually any source of solid carbon, from food scraps to old car tires, and turn it into graphene鈥攕heets of carbon atoms prized for applications ranging from high-strength plastic to flexible electronics. Current techniques yield tiny quantities of picture-perfect graphene or up to tons of less prized graphene chunks; the new method already produces grams per day of near-pristine graphene in the lab, and researchers are now scaling it up to kilograms per day.
鈥淭his work is pioneering from a scientific and practical standpoint鈥� as it promises to make graphene cheap enough to use to strengthen asphalt or paint, says Ray Baughman, a chemist at the University of Texas, Dallas. 鈥淚 wish I had thought of it.鈥� The researchers have already founded a new startup company, Universal Matter, to commercialize their waste-to-graphene process.
With atom-thin sheets of carbon atoms arranged like chicken wire, graphene is stronger than steel, conducts electricity and heat better than copper, and can serve as an impermeable barrier preventing metals from rusting. But since its 2004 discovery, high-quality graphene鈥攅ither single sheets or just a few stacked layers鈥攈as remained expensive to make and purify on an industrial scale. That鈥檚 not a problem for making diminutive devices such as high-speed transistors and efficient light-emitting diodes.聽But current techniques, which make graphene by depositing it from a vapor, are too costly for many high-volume applications. And higher throughput approaches, such as peeling graphene from chunks of the mineral graphite, produce flecks composed of up to 50 graphene layers that are not ideal for most applications.