Graphene is a proven supermaterial, but manufacturing the versatile form of carbon at usable scales remains a challenge

Top-down, exfoliated graphene is far from perfect, and some applications do need that pristine single sheet of carbon.

Bottom-up synthesis builds the carbon sheets one atom at a time over a few hours. This process – called vapor deposition – allows researchers to produce high-quality graphene that is one atom thick and up to 30 inches across. This yields graphene with the best possible mechanical and electrical properties. The problem is that with a bottom-up synthesis, it can take hours to make even 0.00001 gram – not nearly fast enough for any large scale uses like in flexible touch-screen electronics or solar panels, for example.

Current production methods of graphene, both top-down and bottom-up, are expensive as well as energy and resource intensive, and simply produce too little product, too slowly.

Some companies do manufacture graphene and sell it for US$60,000 to $200,000 per ton. There are a limited number of uses that make sense at these high costs.

While small amounts of top-down or bottom-up graphene can satisfy the needs of researchers, for companies even just the process of prototyping a new material, application or manufacturing process requires many pounds of graphene powder or hundreds of graphene sheets and a lot of time and effort. It took significant investment and more than four years of study, development and optimization before graphene hit the production line at Ford.

Current production can barely cover experimentation, much less widespread use.

For a material that has been around since only 2004, a lot of progress has been made in scaling up the production and implementation of graphene.

There are hints that graphene is starting to break through at a commercial level. There are a huge number of graphene-related startups looking at a wide range of uses ranging from energy storage to composites to nerve stimulation. Major companies – such as Tesla, LG and chemical giant BASF – are also investigating how graphene could be used, in rechargeable batteries, flexible or wearable electronics and next-generation materials.

Graphene is ripe for a breakthrough that will bring down the cost and increase the scale of production, and this is an area of intense academic research. One new technique discovered in 2020, called flash joule heating, is especially promising. Researchers have shown that passing large amounts of electricity through any carbon source reorganizes the carbon-carbon bonds into a graphene structure. Using this process, it is possible to make many pounds of high-quality graphene for a relatively low cost out of any carbon-containing material like coal or even trash. A company called Universal Matter Inc. is already commercializing the process.

Once the cost of graphene comes down, the commercial applications will follow. The appetite for graphene is huge, but it is going to take some time before this material lives up to its potential.

This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Kevin Wyss, Rice University. Like this article? subscribe to our weekly newsletter.

Kevin Wyss receives funding through the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, as well as the Rice University Stauffer-Rothrock Fellowship. He has worked in collaboration with Ford Motor Company and Universal Matter, but is not an employee.