The research could yield industrially useful quantities of
"This study is a first of its kind," said Rice chemist James Tour, co-corresponding author of the paper. "We have shown how to make 3-D graphene foams from nongraphene starting materials, and the method lends itself to being scaled to graphene foams for additive manufacturing applications with pore-size control."
Graphene, one of the most intensely studied nanomaterials of the decade, is a two-dimensional sheet of pure carbon that is both ultrastrong and conductive. Scientists hope to use graphene for everything from nanoelectronics and aircraft de-icers to batteries and bone implants. But most industrial applications would require bulk quantities of graphene in a three-dimensional form, and scientists have struggled to find simple ways of creating bulk 3-D graphene.
For example, researchers in Tour's lab began using lasers, powdered sugar and nickel to make 3-D graphene foam in late 2016. Earlier this year they showed that they could reinforce the foam with carbon nanotubes, which produced a material they dubbed "rebar graphene" that could retain its shape while supporting 3,000 times its own weight. But making rebar graphene was no simple task. It required a pre-fabricated 3-D mold, a 1,000-degree Celsius chemical vapor deposition (CVD) process and nearly three hours of heating and cooling.
Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2017-06-chemists-d-graphene-foam.html#jCp
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