Large single-crystal graphene is possible, say scientists

Boasting the conductivity, strength and flexibility we wished for, graphene was proposed as one of the most likely substitutes for silicon and other materials. Its launch into the market however is still slow. What is curbing graphene from industrial applications? One factor is that top quality single-crystal graphene produced so far is just a couple of millimeters or maximum centimeters in size. Recently, a team led by Prof. Feng Ding and Prof. Rodney Ruoff at the Center for Multidimensional Carbon Materials within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS), Prof. Kaihui Liu at Peking University, and their collaborators reported the synthesis of a large sheet of monolayer single-crystal graphene. This result allows a leap forward in graphene production: advancing from a technique that synthesizes a few ㎠ sheet of single-crystal graphene in a couple of hours, to an optimized method that allows the creation of an almost-perfect (> 99.9 % aligned) 5 × 50 ㎠ single-crystal graphene in just 20 minutes. Moreover, the low production costs, comparable to commercially available lower quality polycrystalline graphene films, could expand its usability. Detailed in Science Bulletin, the method is expected to stimulate further fundamental work on graphene and related materials, including large scale folding of graphene sheets, similar to paper, creating origami-like or kirigami-like shapes, which could be applied to future flexible circuits.