Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck
Graphene is stronger than carbon fiber and has tremendous potential for use in a wide array of different fields. The challenge has been producing enough of the material for large-scale use. However, experts at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory might just have the answer.
Researchers at the Department of Energy in Tennessee have turned to chemical vapor deposition to fabricate polymer composites which contain 2-inch-by-2-inch sheets of the single-atom thick, hexagonally arranged carbon atoms.
ORNL’s Ivan Vlassiouk and his colleagues, who published their findings in a recent edition of the journal Applied Materials & Interfaces, believe that using this method to produce graphene could lead to a new generation of flexible electronics while also changing how the substance is viewed and used in the future.
Potential for use in a wide array of different fields
As Vlassiouk’s team explained in their study, researchers have thus far only been able to create scalable graphene-like materials in the form of separated flakes. Furthermore, those materials do not fully exhibit all the potential capabilities of graphene in composite materials.
By using larger sheets of graphene, the researchers eliminated the problems of flake dispersion and agglomeration that have plagued most other fabrication attempts, while also making a material that can better conduct electricity while using less actual graphene in the polymer.
Lowering prices, raising production
“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 explained. This is essential to making sure that the material is competitive on the market, he and his fellow researchers noted.
They believe their graphene could be used in the aerospace industry as a flame-retardant and an anti-icing agent, in the automotive sector to create catalysts and wear-resistant coatings, as well as to make self-cleaning coatings, photovoltaics, filtration systems, electronic displays and more. However, they must first find a way to reduce the cost and demonstrate scalability.
—–
Follow redOrbit on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Instagram and Pinterest.
Comments