Process digram and professor Narayan Hosmane
In an effort to make single walled carbon nano-tubes, a team at Northern Illinois University (NIU) lead by professor Narayan Hosmane, how a simple way to produce graphene. Producing graphene before this discovery, was always a cumbersome, expensive, or hazardous process. Hosmane's method involves burning magnesium metal in solid state carbon dioxide, also known as dry ice. Their results produced large quantities of graphene up to 10 atoms thick. No word on whether this is a uniform thickness, nor the time of manufacturing.
Author of the report on the NIU process, Amartya Chakrabarti, admitted that, "It’s a very simple technique that’s been done by scientists before. But nobody actually closely examined the structure of the carbon that had been produced.”
Amartya Chakrabarti holding a sample of graphene made in the dry ice process
The research was supported by the National Science Foundation, Petroleum Research Fund administered by the American Chemical Society, the Robert A. Welch Foundation , and the Department of Energy.
Eavesdropper
Pictures via NIU
