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Despite this, it is very hard to know if purchased graphene is up to scratch, thanks to a lack of standardisation and quality checking.
A team of researchers at the University of Sussex has set out to tackle the issue with a new technique that gives detailed information about the size and thickness of graphene particles. The process uses a non-destructive, laser-based method for looking at the particles as a whole, and quickly builds a detailed picture of particle distribution in a given material.
“At the moment the graphene industry is a bit of a wild frontier; it's very difficult to compare different products because there is no agreed way of measuring them. That's where studies like ours come in,” said Dr Matt Large, who led the work.
“It's really an important issue for any business looking to reap the benefits of graphene (or any other nanomaterial, for that matter) in their products. Often using the wrong material can either have no benefit at all, or even make product performance worse.”
He added: “A particular example would be composite materials like graphene-reinforced plastics – if a poor-quality graphene material is used it can cause parts to fail instead of providing the improved strength expected. This can be a big issue for industries such as automotive and aerospace, where there is enormous effort behind replacing heavier metal parts with lighter composite materials (like carbon fibre) that are just as strong.
“If graphene and other nanomaterials are to play a role in reducing weight and cost, then agreed standards are really important.”
Some manufacturers say they produce graphene but inadvertently produce a form of graphite, said co-author Aline Amorim Graf, sometimes charging up to £500 per gram.
“The trouble is there's no standardisation. What we've done is to create a new way to measure the quality of nanomaterials like graphene. We use a Raman spectrometer to do this, and have created an algorithm to automate the process. In this way, we can determine the quality, size and thickness of the sample.”
She added: “Purchasers of graphene have no clue as to the quality of what they're buying online. If you're using graphene to strengthen cement, and it turns out it's actually not graphene or is low quality graphene, then that's going to matter.”
The lack of an agreed global standard for graphene and related materials creates a “vacuum and lack of trust in the marketplace for industrial scale adoption of graphene materials”, according to Terrance Barkan, executive director of the Graphene Council.
The Sussex team said they would continue their research and are open to checking the quality of graphene on a consultative basis.
The research was published in the journal Chemistry of Materials.
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