Xinhua Hangzhou, February 4 (Reporter Zhu Han) has been hailed as "the new darling of the industry," Graphene is the focus of attention in recent years, much material has not been fast and safe industrial production methods. Professor Gao Chao Zhejiang University Department of Polymer group to find a suitable for large-scale preparation of the "green line" to make graphene forming one hour, efficiency more than tenfold.
Graphene sheet is formed by a layer of carbon atoms, a hexagonal ring composed of carbon atoms, attached to form a honeycomb ring plane. This is currently the world's thinnest and most hard nanomaterials. Graphene thin layer of less than a nanometer, invisible and intangible, 200,000 graphene together, only as thick as a hair.
Superb presentation, the current method of preparation of graphene mainly mechanical peeling method, oxidation-reduction method. The mechanical limitations of glass method is that the resulting product is a mixture of different layers of graphene, large scale production is difficult graphene; oxidation-reduction method commonly used chlorine-based oxidizing agent and of manganese, up to more than ten hours of preparation time, will produce toxic gases and heavy metal pollution, manganese oxide intermediates are also prone to explosion.
Research group after years of exploration, discovered a new, cheap, non-toxic iron-based oxidant, followed half a century to replace the chlorine-based, manganese-based oxidants.
"This iron oxidant molecules 'runnin' fast, can be like a wedge in general, quickly interspersed into the inside graphite, graphite let quickly separated. This process will produce oxygen, help 'top' on the layers of graphite, so Preparation faster. "superb said that this method is no explosion hazard, does not produce harmful substances, environmental friendly. At the same time, this approach did monolayer graphene oxide in less than an hour to complete, so graphene large-scale industrial application possible.
Related Articles January 21 published in "Nature" magazine published son "natural communication" magazine. Previously, the group has used graphene as a raw material for preparing a variety of forms graphene fibers, aerogels graphene, graphene films macroscopic materials. These high-strength, high toughness, high conductance of graphene materials expected to be widely used in many fields of mobile equipment, aerospace, new energy batteries.