My graphene story: from Concorde to composites

sci:

The Concorde was the first commercial supersonic aircraft to have been built. Image: Wikimedia Commons

In

2011, a chance encounter under the wings of Concorde at Duxford Air Museum,

Cambridge, with Trinity College Dublin Professor Johnny Coleman, would set in

motion a series of events that would lead, six years later, to the development

of a 20t/year graphene manufacturing plant.

As

soon as we got talking, I was impressed by Johnny’s practical, non-nonsense

approach to solving the scalability issue with graphene production.

Coleman is a

physicist, not a chemist, and believed that the solution lay in mechanical

techniques. Following the conference, Thomas Swan agreed to fund his group for

four years to develop a scalable process for the manufacture of graphene.

Just a nanometer thick, graphene consists of a single layer of carbon atoms joined in a hexagonal lattice. Image: Pixabay

Coleman and his

team initially considered sonication – when sound waves are applied to a sample

to agitate its particles – but quickly ruled it out due to its lack of

scalability. He then sent one of his researchers out to the shops to buy a

kitchen blender. They threw together some graphite, water, and a squirt of washing-up

liquid into the blender, switched it on, and went for a cup of coffee.

When

they later analysed the ‘grey soup’ they had created, they found they had

successfully made few-layer graphene platelets. The group then spent months

optimising the technique and worked closely with Thomas Swan scientists to

transfer the process back to Thomas Swan’s manufacturing HQ in Consett, Ireland.

Graphene is 300 times stronger than steel.

The plant can make

up to 20t/year of high quality graphene. It uses a high sheer continuous

process to exfoliate graphite flakes into few-layer graphene platelets in an

aqueous dispersion.

The

dispersion is stabilised by adding various surfactants before separating out

the graphene using continuous cross-flow filtration devices developed with the

support of the UK’s Centre for Process Innovation (CPI), part of the High Value

Manufacturing Catapult – a government initiative focused on fostering

innovation and economic growth in specific research areas.

Using sticky tape, scientists pulled off graphene sheets from a block of graphite. Image: Pixabay

This de-risking of

process development using a Catapult is a classic example of effective government

intervention to support innovative SMEs. CPI not only showed us it worked, but

also optimised the technique for us.

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