(May 15, 2015) One of
the barriers to using graphene at a commercial scale could be overcome using a
method demonstrated by researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge
National Laboratory.
Graphene, a material stronger and stiffer than carbon fiber,
has enormous commercial potential but has been impractical to employ on a large
scale, with researchers limited to using small flakes of the material.
Now, using chemical vapor deposition, a team led by ORNL’s
Ivan Vlassiouk has fabricated polymer composites containing 2-inch-by-2-inch
sheets of the one-atom thick hexagonally arranged carbon atoms.