UNLIMITED GRAPHENE - MIT Graphene Roll to Roll CVD Explained

[Music] subject zero here recently the good folks at MIT developed a way to make graphene that is fast cheap and scalable but how does this method works here at subject zero labs we just don't talk about science we show it to you and we were able to acquire one of these machines to show you firsthand how it works not that we really have one but we do have animations which will hope you like it and maybe gives a thumbs up nevertheless before we start let's talk a little bit about where this technology comes from one of the things that we know about diamonds nanotubes and graphene is that it's much easier to grow them from what we call a seed like if you already have one diamond or a nanotube you can easily grow it by bombarding with chemicals and high pressures and heat so what they did was they got this seed which is nothing more than a tiny piece from an actual diamond and then they apply heat and pressure along with what they call chemical vapor deposit which are carbon molecules like methane that is sprayed onto the seed after some time you will have a grown diamond more like a few days also in this process after a while the diamond starts to lose its shape or the edges get burned if you think about it and therefore it cannot be continuous again limiting the product to small pieces so in terms of diamond making you would usually get for every less than one millimeter thick seed about a one centimeter cube the same principle is applied for nanotubes and graphene however this was limited to very small sizes so if you would like to get enough graphene for instance to actually make something use a full out of it you would be limited to tiny amounts of maybe a few centimeters and then again all the other process that exists are too costly and still don't produce as much as we need something about this you have these huge machines that take a lot of space and only spit out a tiny fragment of what you need building anything out of that will take centuries and then on top of that to make the purest product possible vacuum chambers are necessary and makes the whole thing we more challenging the way to go would be just to work inside these chambers with some kind of mechanism to remove whatever was already created and leave space for a new sheet to be formed hence the roll-to-roll method that MIT developed ladies and gentlemen I give to you the MIT roll-to-roll graphene chemical vapor deposit let's take a look at the machine as you can see we have two chambers that are connected by a pipe basically these two chambers are called input and output the input chamber is where we have the beginning of the pure copper role along with the gaseous exhaust that pumps the gas into the chamber the idea is to have the sheet roll from one side to the other while gas exhaust pumps in methane on top of the copper plate while heat is also applied this is what's called the CVD or chemical vapour deposit think of it as a molecular 3d printer because usually they already have a seed available in the roll by spraying the chemical onto the sheet the molecules will self arrange and continue to create more graphene growing what was already there in a slow reaction depending on how you start this process the seed here is not really necessary because the copper has some properties that facilitates the formation of graphene however the presence of a seed would make things much easier there are more technical parts to this like optimal temperature amount of chemicals being sprayed onto the sheet rolling speed distance from the roller and so on to keep things simple you need an optimum temperature to make the reaction happen at a constant rate too hot and the vapor molecules will not go into the sheet and to coat they won't bind properly creating impurities in the sheet also the methane gas has to be at a highest purity or else you will get gaps that may disrupt the natural pattern of the hexagonal shape of the graphene next is the rolling speed again too fast and the vapor won't bind too slow and it will create undesired layers and lastly we have the distance this is important because you need to keep the temperature at a certain level that won't change the process while increasing the length this would be the challenge of scaling production but why is this achievements so important because this material has the promise to cover the last remaining problem of energy storage and recharge ability it is known for some time now that graphene has the ability to store large amounts of energy in small batteries while being able to recharge in seconds which would be the perfect battery moreover it also can help current lithium-ion batteries to charge faster because of its high conductivity we are talking about solving a lot of problems of energy needs for society and also space travel like for instance it is speculated that a battery of the size of an iPhone will have enough energy to replace all the batteries currently on a Tesla which is about seven to eight thousand and still give more kilometers per charge to sounds like science fiction I know but cool nevertheless and of course if batteries get to this level of efficiency then that means a lot for the solar panel industry also now if all of this comes true or not don't look at me I'm just a messenger I've been following this tech for a while now and actually expect a lot out of it so I guess I'm hyped as much as everybody here so if it actually fulfills its promise what does that means for space travel aside from the energy storing capabilities in about a decade or so we will also be able to make ships that can withstand anything that space has to offer for instance one of the many issues that the ship's have to go through is reentry heat deterioration which happens every time they enter a planet's atmosphere however with graphene based structures they would be a thing of the past because it can stand much more heat than any other material and it would be the cheapest to produce by far it is also very light and really strong which reflects on the amount of load that can be brought up to space basically all the way that you save from the ship itself can be translated into the load amount yes there are a lot of promises coming out of this technology but we don't have time to talk about all of them today so I guess we'll have to do this in another video alright folks that's it we're done here [Music]

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Keywords: graphene, graphene production, chemical vapor deposition, cvd, graphene sheet, cvd graphene, how to make graphene, graphene mass production, cvd process, making graphene, graphene manufacturing, What is CVD?, Mass production of graphene, MIT develops process to make, graphene battery, graphene applications, graphene strength test, stronger than steel, graphene mit, graphene technology, graphene technology 2019, graphene production 2019, subject zero science

Id: K309K-DFqpE

Length: 6min 51sec (411 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 24 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/RelentlessExtropian]

I've been waiting 15 years for industrial scale graphene and nanotube tech... it's one of those things people know about but they dont really KNOW what it means to have inexpensive access to these materials. Every single industry will change because of it. For me personally, I have had dreams and many designs for small electric aircraft that utilize multiple aspects of the material, from structural, to computational and of course energy storage. The amount of improvement to be had at every level of engineering involved is astounding. Step into your relatively quiet private aircraft, so light it can safely parachute to the ground, so durable and impact absorbent you could fall from 200ft while inside it and walk away (in no case would it ever be a free fall at such low altitude). So energy dense it has a range of 600-900 miles. Controlled by high powered high speed computers, the multiple engine system controls the aircraft with no additional moving parts. Making mechanical failure almost impossible with sensors monitoring wear and preflight checks.... I just... love designing things with the capabilities these materials allow for. It really gives a sense of where we are all headed by mid century. And I mean all of us. Everyone. By mid century, will have their lives completely changed by the coming advancements in material science. There is a feedback loop causing an exponential growth curve on top of the exponential growth we are already witnessing. This is where my singularity comes in, not just from computation getting so powerful but every technological industry feeding off of and back into eachother at an incredible rate. I think what will startle people most is the biological advancements that will begin showing up in the next ten years....

Rant over...