Issue 20, 2014

Turbulence-assisted shear exfoliation of graphene using household detergent and a kitchen blender

Abstract

To facilitate progression from the lab to commercial applications, it will be necessary to develop simple, scalable methods to produce high quality graphene. Here we demonstrate the production of large quantities of defect-free graphene using a kitchen blender and household detergent. We have characterised the scaling of both graphene concentration and production rate with the mixing parameters: mixing time, initial graphite concentration, rotor speed and liquid volume. We find the production rate to be invariant with mixing time and to increase strongly with mixing volume, results which are important for scale-up. Even in this simple system, concentrations of up to 1 mg ml−1 and graphene masses of >500 mg can be achieved after a few hours mixing. The maximum production rate was ∼0.15 g h−1, much higher than for standard sonication-based exfoliation methods. We demonstrate that graphene production occurs because the mean turbulent shear rate in the blender exceeds the critical shear rate for exfoliation.

Graphical abstract: Turbulence-assisted shear exfoliation of graphene using household detergent and a kitchen blender

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
25 Jun 2014
Accepted
14 Aug 2014
First published
15 Aug 2014

Nanoscale, 2014,6, 11810-11819

Turbulence-assisted shear exfoliation of graphene using household detergent and a kitchen blender

E. Varrla, K. R. Paton, C. Backes, A. Harvey, R. J. Smith, J. McCauley and J. N. Coleman, Nanoscale, 2014, 6, 11810 DOI: 10.1039/C4NR03560G

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements