Commercial Graphene Production // Allotropes and Applications

[Music] welcome back everyone I'm Jordan ghee segi and this is the limiting factor dozens of videos have been made on graphene and most of them cover the same key talking points my goal in this video is to provide fresh information along with a better industrial and commercial perspective I'll cover the basic chemistry of graphene production methods the ISO standard definitions for the different types of graphene and when we can expect to start seeing graphene and products let's get right into it most of you already know what graphene is it's a two dimensional molecule that has the highest strength of any material and remarkably high conductivity but why does it have these characteristics to understand this we'll need to take a closer look at carbon bear in mind the explanation I'm about to provide is a simplified version of much more complex phenomena carbon forms a sigma type covalent bond with other carbon atoms a sigma type covalent bond is one where atoms share electrons equally between each other such as h2 which is hydrogen bonded with hydrogen also known as hydrogen gas a sigma type covalent bond is the strongest type of chemical bond because the shared electron acts like a rope holding the two atoms together however we don't typically think of hydrogen as strong this is because a pair of hydrogen atoms is just too small to handle to take advantage of the strength of a covalent bond or test it we need a large enough chain of these bonds to make a material we can physically handle this is where carbon has a trick up its sleeve this is an illustration of a graphene ring the carbon atoms are represented by the spheres and the covalent electron bonds are represented by the tubes each carbon sphere has four electrons that it's willing to share with other atoms to form covalent bonds three of these electrons can be shared with other carbon atoms as you can see each carbon atom is bonded to three other carbon atoms the chain of covalent bonds form the familiar chicken-wire structure of graphene with an even larger sheet those covalent bonds can actually be useful in products to make them stronger if you're wondering why graphene forms into rings with six atoms it's because six atom rings are the most thermodynamically stable for carbon it's possible to have more or less atoms in the ring but that's not desirable because it's less uniform and less stable what about conductivity I mentioned a moment ago that carbon has four electrons to share but it only shares three with the other carbon atoms to form graphene what happened to the last lonely electron number four is bounces around the graphene structure in fact every single carbon atom has a spare electron that it's happy to share around electricity is a flow of electrons if the atoms within a material are happy to share electrons they're just as happy to let new electrons in and let other ones go this is exactly what graphene does and it's what makes graphene 1,000 times more conductive than copper graphene has many other properties but its structure and conductivity are the main properties I'll focus on in this video and future videos there are two general methods to manufacture graphene bottom-up and top-down I'll provide examples of each of these methods before we begin one note on quality want to use the word quality I'm referring to materials that have higher conductivity and strength let's start with bottom-up graphene with bottom-up graphene production the graphene is assembled atom by atom to form a single sheet and is often referred to as a film this is what most people are thinking of when they hear the word graphene the ISO definition of this is one layer graphene we'll get more into ISO definitions in a moment as you would expect the bottom-up atom-by-atom method is slow and prone to air it takes trillions of atoms to even form a small piece of material that's maybe a few millimeters square for one layer graphene phones to be useful they have to be pristine that is without holes in the graphene film this why it will likely be a decade before we see one layer graphene and mass production let's take a look at where this technology is right now graphene is a two-dimensional crystal and like other crystals the best way to build it is to grow it in other words it's too difficult to physically build a crystal atom-by-atom instead you provide the right environment and materials and the crystal will build itself atom by atom the way this is done with graphene is to heat a copper plate and a chamber filled with gas such as methane the methane gives up its carbon atoms to the copper plate and in the process the graphene self-assembles on the copper plate this is called chemical vapor deposition or CVD and that's the easy part now that you have a copper plate with a layer of graphene how do you remove the graphene that's stuck to the copper plate so you can use the graphene in short this can't easily be done without ruining the graphene however researchers from MIT published a paper a few weeks ago that claims to have solve the sticky graphene problem they first grow a layer of parylene on the copper plate using CVD perylene is a polymer coating used in the electronics industry so it's not anything exotic after the perylene layer is grown then the graphene layer is grown on top of it the perylene layer is like putting parchment paper on a baking sheet when making cookies it's a lot easier to lift cookies off the parchment paper than a bare metal baking sheet the same is true with removing graphene from the perylene instead of bare copper the researchers claim that the graphene can be lifted off the perylene easily and without damage great so tomorrow we'll see graphene products on shelves not so fast it takes years to perfect production processes and get them to the point where they can drive the cost of a material low enough so that it can be put in any product even when the cost of the material is low it takes time to convince industries to switch to that new material it'll be at least a decade before we see one layer graphene films disrupting industries this takes us to hop down graphene production methods instead of building the graphene atom-by-atom and pristine sheets it's made from a nearly unlimited supply of graphene that mother nature's provided graphite graphite is formed when rock containing high amounts of carbon such as coal is exposed to high pressures and temperatures this causes the high graphene rock to stratify and form into perfect graphene sheets millions of layers thick if the pressure increases further diamonds form top down graphene production is the process of splitting graphite apart layer by layer to release the individual graphene sheets another word for this is exfoliation because it's similar to removing a layer of skin to understand how to create quality graphene through exfoliation it's best to first look at a primitive method of exfoliation the graphene sheets and graphite are stuck together by a force called van der Waals force van der Waals force and the simplest terms as a type of static electricity that happens at the molecular level it's a weak bond that can be broken with little force one way to disrupt that bond is with high concentrations of acid in a process called chemical exfoliation the acid disrupts the bonds by turning the graphite into graphite oxide the graphite oxide is much easier to mechanically exfoliate because it creates groups of oxygen atoms attached to the edges of the graphene that makes up the graphite the best way to think of these oxygen groups is like a bookmark sticking out of a book it's much easier to open the book with the bookmark with these bookmarks in place it's easier to mechanically break up the graphite oxide with methods as simple as stirring the result of breaking up that graphite oxide is graphene oxide graphene oxide is a lower quality material and doesn't exhibit all the excellent qualities of pure graphene there are several ways to repair graphene oxide but they range from toxic to energy intensive to time-consuming none of them are ideal regardless it can be done and the result of the repair work is reduced graphene oxide or rgo rgo still has some imperfections but it's nearly graphene and useful and industrial applications what's the difference between all these forms of graphene graphene oxide is relatively strong rgo is stronger and graphene is the strongest with regards to conductivity graphene oxide is relatively non conductive rgo is conductive and graphene is the most conductive however graphene oxide and rgo have some qualities that graphene doesn't for example they're both soluble in water whereas graphene isn't in other words graphene is considered the highest quality material rgo as ii and graphene oxide is in third with that in mind let's move on to a more advanced top-down process this video is from a company called tog of resources and shows a top-down method of graphene production called electro chemical exfoliation as the name implies it involves chemicals and electricity what's happening here is that the electric current from the electrodes is driving ions from the solution into the structure of the graphite this is possible because the graphite or that Tolga has access to is conductive straight out of the ground when the ions from the solution are driven between the graphene sheets in the graphite they react in the solution to form gas bubbles the gas bubble split the graphite layer by layer causing the graphene to exfoliate notice that this kind of looks like ink or powder I'll explain what this is when we get to ISO standards you might assume electro chemical exfoliation requires toxic or exotic chemicals however the research I found indicates the solution can be made with chemicals as simple as ammonium sulfate which is a cheap bulk material that's often used as a fertilizer this doesn't rule out toxic side reactions but we can't know for sure without knowing more about togas process or formula in general the process isn't without its challenges for example the graphite can disintegrate before it's fully exfoliated into graphene the way this happens is that as soon as a piece of graphite is disconnected from the graphite that's connected to the electrode the ion stop being driven between the sheets of graphene by the electricity when this happens the result is tiny pieces of graphite rather than graphene the research paper shown here proposes a way to stop these pieces of graphite flaking off before they're finished converting to graphene the researchers enclose the graphite in a mesh that holds the graphite in contact with the electrode the result is a graphene material that's better quality than graphene oxide which as you remember was the relatively non conductive and weakest graphene material from the chemical exfoliation method however if the quality isn't as high as the reduced graphene oxide which was the repaired form of the graphene oxide however with some minimal processing the graphene produced from the electro chemical exfoliation method was comparable to the reduced graphene oxide in terms of conductivity talka claims to have trade secret processes that are likely better than what were outlined in this research paper regardless it seems like the challenges with electro chemical exfoliation can be addressed there are other ways of mass-producing top-down graphene that are just as promising as what we've seen from Tolga the privately held company BZ graphene uses a purely mechanical process called liquid phase exfoliation liquid phase exfoliation as a type of mechanical exfoliation mechanical exfoliation includes methods such as using ultrasound on graphite suspended in a liquid to exfoliate the graphene from the graphite I had a chat with me losed unko the CEO of BZ and he pointed me to the ISO standards for graphene we'll need to understand these before we go any further in 2017 the National Physical Laboratory in the UK published iso standard definitions for graphene I haven't seen any other graphene videos cover these definitions which are essential to any discussion on graphene these are the key definitions a single layer of graphene is called one layer graphene a double layer of graphene is called two layer graphene three to ten layers of graphene is called few layer graphene and 11 to 3000 layers of graphene is called Nano platelets not graphene Nano platelets simply nano platelets this is because that many layers of graphene are technically no longer graphene larger than 3000 layers is graphite the BZ collateral claims that ninety percent of what companies claim is graphene is actually nano platelets rather than graphene flake what do I mean by flake in this video there was what looked like an ink or powder precipitating off the piece of graphite that toga was running electricity through that's what single to few layer graphene and nano platelets exfoliated from the graphene look like to the naked eye at the microscopic level that inky material looks like flakes and so it's referred to as flakes all the top-down methods covered in this video produce graphene and nano platelet flake and different ratios and qualities for the rest of this video all refer to all those different forms including nano platelets as simply graphene flake graphene flake is used as an additive in other words it's added to other materials to give those materials some of the qualities of graphene like conductivity or strength it only takes a fraction of a percent of graphene flight to begin to alter the properties of the material that it's added to in other words graphene flake will be both low-cost and not much will be required to get the benefits one last note on bzees process now that we understand the graphene flay easy refers to the liquid phase exfoliation machine has a reactor they claim their reactor produces high-quality flake and that they can adjust the reactor to produce one two or few layer graphene flake I'll be watching both toga and BZ closely in the coming years time for a recap because that was a lot of definitions there are two broad graphene materials the first is graphene films which are pristine 1 layer graphene produced atom by atom in a bottom-up process and are at least 10 years away from a spurred the second broad material was graphene flakes these were one too few layer and nano platelets graphene flake is produced with a top-down method and some producers are already ramping production primitive methods of producing flakes create damaged material called graphene oxide graphene oxide can be repaired somewhat and after the repair process graphene oxide is then called reduced graphene oxide or rgo there's a third form of graphene which is of course graphite but that'll be covered in upcoming videos on anode materials this pie chart from toga resources is a forecast of how much market share each form of graphene flake is expected to have in 2024 and provides an insight into what types of products the flakes will go into the chart is missing 2 layer graphene however it still gives a good indication of the commercial market each form of graphene has uses even Nano platelets which aren't technically graphene if we eyeball the chart in 2024 that looks like only 15% of the graphene market will be for single layer graphene the chart doesn't specify whether that single layer flake or large single layer films regardless the single layer materials will be used in products like solar panels and flexible electronics another 15 percent will be used for commercial products such as paints coatings and circuit boards the remaining 70% will be used for industrial products such as lubricants composites and energy storage the chart doesn't specify but my assumption would be that this pie chart is in terms of revenue I expect that thousands of tons of lower margin flight will cover commercial and industrial uses whereas the premium single layer flakes or films will go into higher-end products with larger margins if the pie chart were split by weight rather than revenue the single layer and a few layer flake would take up less of the pie chart most of the hype around graphene is around cutting edge personal technology I'm as excited about those use cases as anyone but I think graphene will change the world and more subtle and important waise this slide from BZ graphene illustrates just what a turning point graphene is every era of human technological development has been marked by a material that allowed us to bring the things we imagined into reality the era were entering now is the graphene age graphite is cheap and plentiful and one processed in the graphene flag it has few rivals in terms of strength and conductivity nearly everything will have graphene in it just as nearly everything now contains plastic metal fabric concrete and glass all these materials can be improved with a few weight percent of graphene flake and I expect all of them will we'll be able to strip more plastic out of our packaging remove toxic metals from industrial paints and coatings make our buildings into new shapes and with less material make electric flight part of our day-to-day lives and make life in space and on other planets a reality this will be compounded by multiple other revolutions happening at the same time in genetics aerospace renewable energy nanotechnology brain-machine interfaces artificial intelligence and batteries so where are we with graphene now and when can we expect this future this slide from toggle resources shows where graphene is currently at right now bulk production of graphene flake is being established and new materials are being tested in the next few years the first volume leaders and the industry will be established from 2022 some manufacturers will start to become familiar with graphene based materials graphene will quietly make its way into materials like product packaging specialized concrete and industrial paints it'll enter the market more loudly in products like high-end sports equipment and maybe cellphone batteries will come back to batteries in a moment after 2025 the real graphene boom will begin graphene will filter its way into products from luxury down to budget from 2030 graphene will hit its stride with mass adoption companies will be putting graphene flanked into everything the supply and budget will allow and large single layer graphene films will begin to hit the mainstream with graphene and all the other technological advancements going on we'll be getting the first Inklings of the sci-fi promised land in our lived physical world a moment ago I mentioned batteries and all clothes on that topic I'll provide an executive summary now for those who've been asking about graphene and batteries in the future I can make an entire video on graphene and batteries there's many ways that it can be used to improve their performance the most likely way for graphene to be added to batteries is by adding graphene to the anode the type of graphene used for this would be the few layer graphene or nano platelets we discussed above adding graphene to the anode improves charge rates and cycle life but doesn't improve energy density due to the further processing and small supply graphene is and will continue to be more expensive than graphite so not only is this graphene flake more expensive than regular graphite anode it doesn't reduce the amount of material needed to make the battery expensive batteries work for small personal electronics like chargers and mobile phones however vehicles require thousands of cells and cost as more of an issue Tesla and other manufacturers are primarily focused on making the batteries cheaper which means getting rid of expensive materials and using materials that are more energy dense so less material can be used graphene doesn't improve energy density or reduce costs so I'm not expecting to see it an automotive batteries within the next few years now that we have a good understanding of graphene we'll move on to anode materials in the next two videos nove onyx by popular demand will be covered in the next video and the video following that will be on toggle resources graphite anodes are far more interesting and far more promising than they get credit for and I'm looking forward to sharing what I've learned if you enjoyed this video please consider supporting me on patreon with the link at the end of the video or snag something off the Merc shelf below I'm also active on Twitter and reddit you can find the details of those in the description and I look forward to hearing from you a special thanks to Durbin Brown p.m. Nord quest and Neil Pitts for your generous support of the channel and all the other patrons listed in the credits I appreciate all of your support and thanks for tuning in you

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Views: 47,998

Rating: 4.9670844 out of 5

Keywords: the limiting factor, the limiting factor channel, limiting factor, jordan giesige, graphene, reduced graphene oxide, rgo, graphene oxide, graphite, how does graphene work, graphene battery, graphene production, graphene layers, talga graphene, talga, physics, what is graphene, commercial graphene, commercial graphene production, graphene applications, graphene forms, industrial graphene, graphene industry, graphene age

Id: IbKp2fSS2ew

Length: 22min 40sec (1360 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 02 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/The-Corinthian-Man]

Edit: Nevermind, found it in the description of an old video. It's Homer Said, by Dyalla.

Not really on topic, but what music is that in the intro? It's really familiar...

[u/theBad_police]

Great video, graphene’s going to change the future.