Graphene The material of the Future?

We are facing one of the most important discoveries of recent years, of those that seldom happen in science and that is destined to be the "next great breakthrough", revolutionizing technology in the coming years.

It is a material synthesized from graphite and is composed of carbon atoms arranged hexagonally and grouped dense in sheets of very fine dimensions (one atom thick). It is one of the strongest, thinnest and most flexible compounds that currently exist.

Although graphene is known since 1930, its studies were abandoned because it was believed that such a material could not exist, since they considered that if a single layer of graphite was isolated, it would be so full of defects that it would be unstable at room temperature . 

It was not until 2004 when two Russian scientists Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov made revolutionary discoveries about this material, isolating it from the temperature that made it unstable. That is why the Royal Academy of Sciences awarded them the Nobel Prize in 2010.

As has happened many times throughout history, great discoveries arise by mistake or as a consequence of unexpected results and the case of graphene has not been very different. This finding arises from some studies conducted by these scientists on graphite. To carry out these investigations it was necessary that its surface was very clean and smooth and although the scientific laboratories where the experiments were carried out were highly technological, quite primitive methods were used. The procedure consisted in sticking a piece of adhesive tape over the sample and extracting the most superficial layers which used to be damaged or contaminated and once this process was carried out, the remaining graphite was studied. But this time instead of focusing on the sample,

Properties

As previously mentioned, it is an extremely hard material, it is considered 200 times more resistant than a steel sheet of the same thickness and at the same time it is very flexible and elastic, which allows it to be molded according to the needs of each case. It is also a very light material like carbon fiber but it is more flexible than this one and at the same time more dense since it is not crossed neither by the smaller atoms such as helium (in gaseous form since it allows the passage of Water).

It supports the ionizing radiation well and is susceptible to react chemically with other materials, which allows to produce compounds of different properties, giving it a great capacity for development.

It has extraordinary electrical, thermal, optical and mechanical properties, with an excellent conductivity, even better than copper, which makes it an optimal material for the manufacture of field effect transistor type devices.

Another of the properties of single layer graphene powder  is that it has an antibacterial effect since when studying its behavior with living organisms it was observed that the bacteria do not grow in it, which allows its use in the food industry and biomedicine.

Applications

This material will make it possible to manufacture from electronic devices with flexible and transparent screens, batteries of greater duration and shorter loading time to powerful solar panels, since it is capable of generating electricity through solar energy.

It will allow computers to be developed faster and with a lower power consumption than current silicon ones and hard disks of the same size could be manufactured but with a thousand times higher capacity. The only drawback is that it does not have resistivity, so it can not stop driving electricity and that can be an inconvenience when it comes to replacing silicon.

A possible use in the field of medicine would be in x-ray machines that emit ionizing radiation which wear away very quickly the materials that surround it and as graphene is very resistant to this type of radiation would have an almost infinite duration. It has also been shown that graphene oxide acts as an anti-carcinogen so it could be used to decrease tumors and prevent the spread of cancer.

The use of porous graphene sheets that allow replacing the membranes in the reverse osmosis process for water desalination is being investigated, through which greater efficiencies and lower energy consumption would be obtained.

In addition to all those already mentioned, graphene also has application in automotive, aeronautics, aerospace engineering, food industry, construction and other sectors that are currently investigated. For all this and much more is considered graphene as the material of the future, which can give rise to a new technological era, leaving history for the era of silicon, as it does not have a single application, nor is a single material which is a family of materials

Production and Marketing

Seeing all the practical applications that graphene has and the extraordinary properties that it has and that make it one of the materials with the greatest potential for the future, how is it that it has not been exploited definitively ?. Well, for this material to preserve its intact properties the sample must be of the highest possible quality and the problem is that today there is no balance between quality, cost and production at the industrial level. 

Although there are three ways to obtain graphene, currently only two methods are used commercially: Sheet and powder. With these methods a sufficient quantity is obtained for its commercialization although the problem lies in that the product is not obtained with a sufficient quality.

Graphene foil → high quality material but its production is very expensive.

Graphene powder → lower quality material and its obtaining process is cheaper since it renounces part of its properties.

On the other hand, the traditional method of extracting graphene from graphite using adhesive tape is the one that obtains the highest quality samples. The problem is that the quantity produced is very small and is not sufficient for industrial use.

Recently researchers from Rice University have been able to synthesize graphene from sugar at 800º obtaining high quality samples. Graphite oxidation techniques have also been used, by means of which a powder called graphite oxide is obtained and particles suspended in the water are obtained by means of an ultrasonic cleaner.

At present there are several scientific teams that focus on the search for more effective and economical methods of producing quality graphene and although the results are promising there is still a long way to go.