Editor’s note: This is Part One in a series of stories on the research and development work of a team of scientists led by Dr. James Tour of Rice University. This story focuses on the material graphene and the team’s Flash Joule Heating process used to make a new and superior type of graphene known as turbostratic or flash graphene.
Future articles will explore why and how this new technology is a huge materials science breakthrough. They also will take a look at the company behind this new technology, Universal Matter, as well as other flash graphene applications in a rapidly expanding range of fields.
The story of graphene’s discovery two decades ago and its meandering journey to commercial viability is fascinating. What’s more, the tale’s most exciting chapters have yet to be written.
Some of these surround the research and development work by Rice University’s Dr. James Tour and his students.
What is graphene?
Graphene is a two-dimensional allotrope of carbon, which means it is a layer of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice structure a mere single atom thick. It is composed of a continuous sheet of carbon atoms bonded together through strong covalent bonds.
The unique structure of graphene gives it remarkable properties, such as high electrical conductivity, strength, and flexibility. It is often described as a wonder material due to its applications in various fields, including electronics, energy storage, and biomedical engineering.
“Graphene is a versatile carbon-based nanomaterial that is 200 times stronger than steel but can stretch up to 25 percent of its original length,” according to graphene producer Universal Matter, a company founded by one of Tour’s students, Duy Loung. Tour credits Luong with the discovery of the Flash Joule heating process.
Besides its unparalleled strength, graphene conducts electricity better than copper, which is currently the gold standard for electrical conductivity. Moreover, its thermal conductivity is among the highest of any known material, and despite being a dense material, it is almost completely transparent.
How was graphene discovered?
Graphene was first isolated and identified in 2004 by two scientists, Andre Gein and Konstantin Novoselov, at the University of Manchester in the UK.
The story behind the discovery of graphene involves a bit of playfulness. Geim and Novoselov were actually trying to extract thin layers of graphite using a technique called micromechanical cleavage, which involved peeling layers off with Scotch tape.
One Friday night, while experimenting with this method, they noticed that some of the flakes on the Scotch tape were thinner than others. They continued to peel off layer after layer until they were left with a single atomic layer of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal pattern, which they later named graphene.
This groundbreaking discovery earned Geim and Novoselov the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2010. Graphene has since become a hot topic in materials science due to its extraordinary properties, including being incredibly strong, lightweight, and an excellent conductor of electricity.
Since its discovery in 2004, significant progress has been made in developing graphene’s commercial viability, although there is still a long way to go.
The groundbreaking discoveries of James Tour’s team
Researchers are only scratching the surface of the many potential applications for graphene. As noted, some of the most exciting advances in graphene technology are being driven by Rice University’s Dr. James Tour and his team of researchers.
A leading figure in the fields of chemistry and nanotechnology, Dr. Tour holds more than 200 patents and has published more than 650 research papers. He has a history of empowering his students by enabling them to create their own companies while retaining their own intellectual property from their research. One of those ventures is Luong’s company, Universal Matter, Inc.
Universal Matter is spearheading the commercialization of what is now known as flash graphene flash graphene, which is created by the company’s proprietary Flash Joule process.
An illustration of this is the remarkable story of Duy Loung’s discovery of the process, which is used to transform any carbon-based material, and especially waste materials, into flash graphene.
As a bonus, the valuable element hydrogen (the fuel in fuel cells) is also produced in the process. Hydrogen is one of only three elements in the periodic table that can be used to produce fuel, Tour points out. Carbon (fossil fuels) and plutonium (nuclear fuel rods) are the other two.
How the Flash Joule heating process works
In the Flash Joule process, any carbon-based material such as waste plastic, for example, can be put between two electrodes. It is then “flashed” for a very short time at an extremely high temperature. In less than a few seconds, the material is transformed into pure graphene.
“This method produces high-quality turbostratic graphene from a wide variety of carbon-based materials, including waste streams like biomass, recycled plastics, and even food waste,” Tour noted in a 2023 YouTube video on the subject.
“Typically, graphene is now made by mining graphite [which takes] a lot of energy. They take the graphite, and they exfoliate [de-layer] it with big machines and the remaining stacks are perfectly oriented [and therefore] they’re hard to pry them apart.”
However, “when we make it in [the Flash Joule Heating] process, it happens so quickly that the layers have no time to order. And so because…they can’t order, then when you put it in composites it disperses much better.” This is turbostratic graphene.
In the drawing above, a is the feedstock input, b is what the carbon-based feedstock looks like at the atomic level, and c and d are what the end product of the Flash Joule Heating process looks like atomically. This is “flashed” or flash (turbostratic) graphene.
Note that the temperature spike to 3,000 degrees Kelvin happens over a millisecond. 3,000 degrees Kelvin is equivalent to 2,800 degrees Celsius or 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
Graphene sheets one atom thick
Graphene is a nanomaterial produced in sheets that are one atom thick. To uniformly strengthen materials, it’s important to evenly disperse the graphene into the materials. As an example of how this works, adding just one percent of graphene evenly throughout concrete increases its strength by 30 percent, Tour has noted.
To strengthen a material “by making a nanocomposite you have to do two things,” he further explained. “You have to have good dispersion and good interfacial interaction1 between the [graphene] nanomaterial and the host material.” Tour believes this is a dramatic advance in materials science.
Flash Joule heating: a highly efficient process
The Flash Joule process is remarkably efficient, creating graphene in seconds by firing a flash of electricity through the carbon material. This not only breaks all chemical bonds but also reorders the carbon into thin layers of graphene, while eliminating non-carbon impurities. This results in a product that is more than 99 percent pure graphene.
“Hetero atoms like silicon [and] aluminum all sublime out because they heat to 3100 Kelvin. That’s about 2,800° C in about 100 milliseconds,” Tour explained in an earlier YouTube video. “Actually, it heats to that temperature in 10 milliseconds. We run it for 100 milliseconds.”
More recently, Tour’s team has found that extending the flash process to 3-4 seconds provides an increased measure of safety.
Universal Matter, headquartered in Houston, Texas, and Ontario, Canada, hopes to offer an economical, high-quality alternative to traditional graphene production methods. Actual price-point differences will be dramatic, Tour has suggested.
We will go into greater detail regarding production costs and price trends in graphene in the second installment of this series.
The structure of Universal Matter’s turbostratic graphene results in superior physical properties, such as better electrical and thermal conductivity, and allows for the use of lower quantities in composites to achieve the same performance gains.
The company is well-positioned to serve a broad array of industries from concrete and asphalt materials to medical technology and other composites.
Universal Matter’s process not only promises a significant reduction in the cost of graphene production but also holds potential environmental benefits by utilizing recycled materials and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Flash graphene’s properties have multiple potential applications. We will delve deeper into a host of applications in the third installment in this series, but here is a sampling:
- Graphene’s conductivity and large surface area make it ideal for use in batteries and supercapacitors. Faster-charging, higher-capacity batteries would be the result.
- Graphene’s unique properties could be harnessed for various medical applications, for example in drug delivery and biosensors.
- It has potential applications in coatings that are conductive, waterproof, or heat resistant.
- Due to its ability to form a barrier against substances, graphene could be used in water purification technologies.
- Graphene could be used to enhance the efficiency and durability of electronics.
- Its strength and lightness are particularly appealing for aerospace applications, where reducing weight is crucial.
The potential of flash graphene is vast, but it’s important to note that many of these applications are still in the research and development stage, and it may take time for them to become commercially viable. There also are challenges in scaling up graphene production using the Flash Joule process.
Like most businesses, Universal Matter doesn’t go into great detail regarding its product development progress. The company obviously needs to guard its proprietary technology, as its potential value is enormous.
That means the public is not privy to the challenges Universal Matters faces in rolling out Flash Joule Heating manufacturing at scale—but stay tuned, because the future looks flashy for flash graphene.
Note
- Interfacial interaction in chemistry refers to the way different substances interact at the point where they meet, like where oil touches water. This interaction is crucial because it influences how substances mix or separate, stick together, or react with each other. For example, when you mix oil and water, the oil forms droplets because the interaction between oil and water molecules is weak, and they prefer to stay separate.
