A group of researchers made up of doctors from Rice and Tianjin Universities has just made headlines after managing to develop a unique methodology with which to manufacture cubes one centimeter on a side of atomically thin graphene. Thanks to this research, as it has been concluded, finally the human being could have managed to find a form of power make graphene in bulk.
According to the chemist's words James tour, co-author of the document that is going around the world:
This study is the first of its kind. We have demonstrated how to make 3D graphene foams on non-graphene starting materials, and the method lends itself to being scaled up to graphene foams for additive manufacturing applications with pore size control.
A group of researchers manages to develop a methodology to manufacture graphene in large quantities
Now, manufacturing this material is very complex since it requires a pre-manufactured mold using a 3D printing process based on chemical vapor deposition at about 1.000 degrees Celsius and almost three hours of heating and cooling. After many hours of research, the team has managed to adapt this work to the use of a common 3D printing technique with which to make finger-sized blocks of graphene foam.
Heeding the words about this new method of junwei sha, alumnus of Tour's lab and post-doctoral researcher in Tianjin:
This simple and efficient method eliminates the need for cold press molds and high temperature treatment. We should also be able to use this process to produce specific types of graphene foam like 3D-printed corrugated graphite, as well as nitrogen and sulfur doped graphene foam, changing the precursor powders.