Graphene takes a step forward

It bends and stretches and might one day replace silicon.

Five years down the line and it looks like graphene can now be made on a large scale in order to replace other high-tech materials used in displays and even to replace silicon in electronics.

A team of researchers at Sungkyunkwan University in Suwon, Korea lead by Byung Hee Hong have managed to produce a wafer thin layer of graphene made up of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) which can be bent and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) which is stretchable. The result is a film which can conduct electricity better than any graphene produced previously.

In order to overcome the problem of the past of making graphene on a large scale Hong’s team used a chemical vapour deposition technique which produced high-quality films of graphene at just a few atoms thick and several centimeters wide.

The samples produced aren’t yet perfected, yet Hong reckons that this is not far off. The samples can be chemically etched to make specific shapes which, when stamped onto polymer, can be bent or stretched by up to 11 per cent without losing conductivity.

By making the layers of graphene this thin, the electrodes are transparent, this makes them perfect for portable displays replacing current materials such as indium titanium oxide which is both expensive and non-flexible.

"We are planning to get an investment to build up mass-production facility of the large-scale graphene films," explains Hong.

One of the first to make graphene, Andre Geim, from the University of Manchester says that this new mass production of film, "Will tremendously influence the speed of development in this area".

Although this in itself is exciting news for graphene followers, Hong has higher expectations, as he wants to work towards using the film to replace the silicon based materials used in semiconductor technologies – although this looks like it may be a long way off.

http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090114/full/news.2009.28.html