Carbon Sciences is developing a breakthrough technology to mass-produce graphene, the new miracle material. Graphene, a sheet of pure carbon that is only one atom thick, is flexible, transparent, impermeable to moisture, stronger than diamonds and more conductive than gold. Ever since the Nobel Prize was awarded for its discovery, experts believe graphene to be the miracle material that will enable revolutionary applications such as bendable touchscreen displays, rapid charge batteries, super-capacitors, low cost solar cells, extreme high-speed semiconductors, biosensors, as well as water purification.

While the raw materials to make graphene are readily available, the lack of an industrial scale manufacturing process has hindered its commercial use. Carbon Sciences is developing a breakthrough process that will transform natural gas into commercial size sheets of graphene that can be fine-tuned with application-specific electrical and materials properties.

A Commercial Scale Process to Unleash the Miracle Potentials of Graphene

Graphene – the Miracle Material

Graphene, a sheet of pure carbon that is only one atom thick, is flexible, transparent, impermeable to moisture, stronger than diamonds and more conductive than gold. Experts believe graphene to be the miracle material that will enable revolutionary applications such as bendable touch screen displays, rapid charge batteries, super-capacitors, low cost solar cells, extreme high-speed semiconductors, biosensors, as well as water purification. 

While the incredible properties of graphene make it worthy of its "miracle material" label, the quest to actually produce and use graphene in commercial applications is full of challenges. Using simple adhesive tape to lift flakes of graphene from graphite, University of Manchester researchers Geim and Novoselov were awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics for their pioneering isolation and characterization of graphene.

However, to unleash its full potential for commercial applications, a more highly controlled and efficient way to produce high quality graphene is needed. Many laboratories around the world have produced graphene sheets in very small sizes, such as centimeter squares. While there are advancements in creating large sheets, they are not yet at commercial scale.

Carbon Sciences – a Flexible Graphene Process

Carbon Sciences is developing an innovative flexible chemical vapor deposition (CVD) process that will rapidly produce commercial size sheets of graphene with the ability for in-situ fine-tuning of application-specific electrical and materials properties.

Unlike the "lifting" of naturally occurring graphene sheets from graphite, a CVD process can chemically synthesize graphene sheets using raw materials such as methane (CH4), the primary component of readily available and abundant natural gas. In a CVD process, carbon atoms are broken off of methane molecules and then reassembled into a pristine sheet of honeycomb graphene lattice. CVD machines are commercially available and are proven platforms for the high-speed production of materials for the electronics industry. A graphene specific CVD process would have process and catalyst innovations specifically designed for graphene.

Graphene Enabled "Killer Applications"

Industry experts and scientists believe that graphene is the miracle material that can enable new categories of "killer applications" that have not been possible with existing materials. Graphene's capabilities and commercial potential have not been fully understood or explored. However, its properties, which have been demonstrated and confirmed in laboratories around the world, suggest that graphene is a very promising material with potentially revolutionary applications.