A small furnace (~$500) and some nickel foil (~$150) is all that is needed to create graphene… Well that and a little experimentation to determine the best temperature and cooling profiles…
Now that you could make it, you just need to decide what to do with the stuff…
Source for nickel foil
And a inexpensive but good quality (American made) furnace that could be used…
Jewelry has an appropriate furnace if they are willing to allow its use. The only thing I don’t think it has is a digital temperature controller, but those are pretty cheap…
There also is a roll of nickel strip in the electronics toolbox. It’s for the battery spot welder but I’m sure they would let you use some for making graphene!
Just heard about this yesterday but haven’t have a chance to look into the reality always lurking behind the media news story headline. The fact that it’s in Nature Communications though… there couldn’t be a better journal for such a method to published in if it wasn’t immediately applicable!! I’m excited but cautiously optimistic!
How would you know it’s actually graphine after it’s done?
The original article covered that. There are tests. The biggest problem they found seems to have been that the resultant graphene is not perfect. I had sections that were more then one molecule thick…
4 point conductivity measurement
One is likely to get away with simple 2 point conductivity measurement but don’t hold me to that
And of course, one of the other answers to every problem ever… Raman Spectroscopy
I’m only casually familiar with raman spectroscopy, but would the scattering be different between graphene and graphite?
Thanks for underscoring this paper! I’m reading through it and working through the logistics.
That $500 oven is looking a beaut! Somebody better get going on his graphene and cnt honoraiums. Do you have a recommendation for a chamber with outgassing valve thingamobber?
Figure 2A, pg.4 from here, friend. Graphite is composed of 8 or more layers of stacked, single-layer graphene sheets held together by Van der Waals forces. The spectral peak observed between 1580-1590cm-1 corresponds to an in-plane, vibrational mode termed a phonon. The stacked Van der Waals forces in graphite restrict that in-plane vibration corresponding to the upshifted spectral peak observed in graphite. Simples, right? hehe
They use a 532nm laser to boot! That’s our excitation frequency