Potential Roll-to-Roll Manufacturing Process for Graphene Developed

[Guest_Jim_*]

As amazing as a material may be, it is not until it is easily accessible that it can really shine. Graphene was discovered years ago and researchers have been discovering possible uses for it since then, while also searching for new ways to make it. Researchers at MIT have recently developed a roll-to-roll means to create large graphene sheets, only limited in size by the size of the foil substrate and deposition chambers used.

Graphene is an atom-thick sheet of carbon atoms that has many extraordinary properties, but producing it in large quantities is very difficult. Typically it requires either pulling it off of pieces of graphite or furnaces with chemical vapor deposition (CVD) that only put out stamp-sized pieces. This new means though is an adaptation of the CVD method that uses two concentric tubes for the vacuum chamber, and allows a foil substrate to be run through. The foil winds around the inner tube as it moves through the system, and holes in the inner tube allows the necessary mixture of vapors to reach the substrate, to prepare it to grow the graphene, and to actually grow it. Throughout the process, the whole chamber is heated to 1000 ºC.

Thus far the system has only been built on a laboratory scale and the foil had to move through at just one inch per minute to create high-quality graphene. It is possible to go faster, but that degrades the quality of the graphene, and while lower-quality graphene may still have applications, the researchers want to see if they can push the speed, while also scaling the system up. Though the focus was on graphene, this process could be adapted for growing other 2D materials and even carbon nanotubes.

Source: MIT

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