Make Graphene

Single-atom-thick sheets of carbon called graphene have some amazing properties: graphene is strong, highly electrically conductive, flexible, and transparent. This makes it a promising material to make flexible touch screens and superstrong structural materials. But creating these thin carbon sheets, and then building things out of them, is difficult to do outside the lab.
Now an advance in making and processing graphene in solution may make it practical to work with the material at manufacturing scale. Researchers at Rice University have made graphene solutions 10 times more concentrated than any before. They've used these solutions to make transparent, conductive sheets similar to the electrodes on displays, and they're currently developing methods for spinning the graphene solutions to generate fibers and structural materials for airplanes and other vehicles that promise to be less expensive than today's carbon fiber.

Whatever the end product, it's ideal to start with a high-concentration solution of graphene, but existing methods can't achieve this, says James Tour, professor of chemistry at Rice University. Graphene isn't very soluble, partly because of its dimensions, and partly because of its chemistry. Graphene is just one atom thick, but its surface area is huge. "If you want to work with graphene, you're working dilute, which makes sense, because this is a huge whopping molecule," Tour says.