Mass Production of Multilayer Graphene via Chamber Explosion

CHRISTOPHER M. SORENSEN, Justin P. Wright, Shusil Sigdel, Arjun Nepal, Stephen Corkill, Jun Li, Ranjith Divigalpitiya, Stefan Bossmann, Kansas State University

     Abstract Number: 18
     Working Group: Nanoparticles and Materials Synthesis

Abstract
We describe a method to create high-quality, multi-layer, turbostratic graphene aerosol gels by detonating fuel rich mixtures of acetylene, ethylene, toluene and other hydrocarbons with oxygen in a multi-liter chamber. Important characteristics of our controlled explosion synthesis method include its simplicity, fill the chamber with gases, ignite with a spark, and collect the graphene; it uses industrially available gases; it requires no catalyst, no toxic chemicals; it is exothermic, hence has very low energy needs; and the by-product is H₂ + CO, i.e. “Syngas”, which can be separated for the H₂ and/or used as feedstock for Fischer-Tropsch reactions. We will also describe scale-up of this method and the consequent production plant. The physics of the method lies in the constant volume of the chamber, hence, via the first law of thermodynamics, no work is done and all the chemical energy released by the explosive combustion creates high temperatures leading to graphene rather than soot. We forecast that this flexible, gas phase chemistry, constant volume explosion method can be extended beyond carbon to the rest of the Periodic Table to create aerosols and aerosol gels of a wide variety of novel materials.