Kitchen Blender, Dishwashing Liquid Used to Isolate Graphene

Researchers have isolated graphene sheets using water, dishwashing liquid and a kitchen blender.

According to researchers at Trinity College Dublin and colleagues, the method could be used to isolate graphene in large quantities.

"We developed a new way of making graphene sheets," Trinity College Dublin chemical physics professor Jonathan Coleman, co author of the study, told AFP. "This method gives lots of graphene with no defects."

Graphene, the super strong and conductive wonder-material, was first isolated in 2004 by Andre Geim and Professor Konstantin Novoselov. They used sticky tape to isolate thin sheets of graphene. Their pioneering work on the material got them a Nobel Prize in 2010.

Now, researchers from Ireland and their colleagues in England have found a cheap way to mass-produce the 2-dimensional material, which is considered the next-big thing in semiconductor industry.

The team demonstrated that graphene can be extracted from graphete, which is found in pencil lead, New Scientist reported. The team used water, dishwashing liquid and a blender to obtain thin sheets of the material.

The first round of experiments was conducted using industrial equipment called shear mixers and solvents, according to AFP.

The team found that the new process could produce five grams of graphene per hour compared to other techniques that produced less than half a gram per hour, New Scientist reported.

Later, the team tried using a kitchen blender and Fairy Liquid, which is a dishwashing liquid available in the U.K. to see if they could isolate graphene.

And they did!                                                                        

"If you are using a blender, why use a fancy expensive surfactant? Why not use the simplest surfactant there is, and I guess that is Fairy Liquid," Coleman told New Scientist.

However, this is no do-it-yourself technique. Ordinary graphete contains several contaminants. So, trying to use the method at home would only leave a slurry of black liquid with nanometer-thin slices of graphene.

The study is published in the journal Nature Materials.

Graphene is more durable than steel, conducts electricity and is flexible. But a major problem with the 2- dimensional material is that it exists in chunks rather than sheets.

Samsung Electronics recently announced they have found a way to produce large sheets of graphene by growing crystals of the material on germanium. Samsung wants to use graphene in next-generation electronics that are tough and bendable.