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Scalable production of large quantities of defect-free few-layer graphene by shear exfoliation in liquids

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posted on 2023-06-07, 06:37 authored by Keith R Paton, Eswaraiah Varrla, Claudia Backes, Ronan J Smith, Umar Khan, Arlene O’Neill, Conor Boland, Mustafa Lotya, Oana M Istrate, Paul King, Tom Higgins, Sebastian Barwich, Peter May, Pawel Puczkarski, Iftikhar Ahmed, Matthias Moebius, Henrik Pettersson, Edmund Long, João Coelho, Sean E O’Brien, Eva K McGuire, Beatriz Mendoza Sanchez, Georg S Duesberg, Niall McEvoy, Timothy J Pennycook, Clive Downing, Alison Crossley, Valeria Nicolosi, Jonathan N Coleman
To progress from the laboratory to commercial applications, it will be necessary to develop industrially scalable methods to produce large quantities of defect-free graphene. Here we show that high-shear mixing of graphite in suitable stabilizing liquids results in large-scale exfoliation to give dispersions of graphene nanosheets. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and Raman spectroscopy show the exfoliated flakes to be unoxidized and free of basal-plane defects. We have developed a simple model that shows exfoliation to occur once the local shear rate exceeds 10(4) s(-1). By fully characterizing the scaling behaviour of the graphene production rate, we show that exfoliation can be achieved in liquid volumes from hundreds of millilitres up to hundreds of litres and beyond. The graphene produced by this method performs well in applications from composites to conductive coatings. This method can be applied to exfoliate BN, MoS2 and a range of other layered crystals.

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Accepted version

Journal

Nature Materials

ISSN

1476-1122

Publisher

Nature Research

Issue

6

Volume

13

Page range

624-630

Department affiliated with

  • Physics and Astronomy Publications

Research groups affiliated with

  • Mathematical Physics Group Publications

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2019-06-27

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2019-06-27

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2019-06-27

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