Controlled Explosions to Efficiently Mass-Produce Graphene

Kansas State University physicists have discovered a way to mass-produce graphene with three ingredients - hydrocarbon gas, oxygen, and a spark plug. Unlike other methods of creating graphene, the new method is simple, efficient, low-cost, and scalable for industry. The method involves filling a chamber with acetylene or ethylene gas and oxygen, using a vehicle spark plug to create a contained detonation, and then collecting the graphene that forms afterward. The energy required to make a gram of graphene through this process is much less than other processes because it only takes a single spark. Other methods of creating graphene involve 'cooking' the mineral graphite with chemicals - such as sulfuric acid or sodium nitrate - for a long time at precisely prescribed temperatures. Additional methods involve heating hydrocarbons to 1,000 degrees Celsius in the presence of catalysts. These methods are energy intensive, potentially dangerous, and have low yield.

Transcript

00:00:05 this cuss excluders experiment is in progress we make graphene by this hydrocarbon detonation technique what we do basically is we fill the chamber with the precursor hydro carbon and oxygen and after one atmospheric pressure inside the detonation chamber we give the spark from these automotive spark plugs into the chamber and that precursor and oxygen mixture into the

00:00:50 chamber get burn and the incomplete combustion into the chamber yields some carbon particles which aggregate into gases that is the overall approach of this detonation technique of making dirty [Music] you