Posted March 23, 2017

 

By Seshadri Ramkumar

 

Graphene has been made using soybean oil by a team of Australian scientists.

 

Graphene, deemed recently as a wonder material, is a type of carbon that is strong, thin and allows good electrical conductivity. These properties enable it have potential applications in wide array of sectors such as electronics, biomedicine and aerospace.

 

The Australian team led by CSIRO Australia has come up with a new method of graphene production, termed “GraphAir,” which uses ambient environmental conditions to grow graphene films. This process deviates from other conventional techniques that require high energy and extensive vacuum. The conventional methods are costly, which has prevented good commercial success of graphene.

 

In the new method, soybean oil was used as a precursor to develop graphene using one-step process. Interestingly, the team has experimented with leftover cooking and waste oils.

 

According to Dr. Dong Han Seo, the CSIRO scientist involved in the study, the new technique results in graphene with good and comparable properties with graphene developed using conventional processes.

 

The scientists envision applications such as improving battery performance and developing cheap and efficient solar panels, to name a few.

 

In 2010, the Nobel Prize committee recognized two scientists from the University of Manchester, U.K., for their work on graphene.

 

Dr. Seshadri Ramkumar, Ph.D, FTA (honorary), is a professor at the Nonwovens & Advanced Materials Laboratory at Texas Tech.