May 2010

Researchers from Rice University and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology today developed a new method to produce very pure graphene. The idea is to dissolve graphite in chlorosulphonic acid, a common industrial solvent. Using new methods to measure the aggregation of the dissolved graphene flakes, individual graphene layers in the graphite peeled apart spontaneously.

The team was able to dissolve as much as two grams of graphene per liter of acid to produce solutions at least 10 times more concentrated than existing methods.

Researchers from Rice University say that have plans to create Graphene based quantum dots - which could enable single-molecule sensors and could lead to ultra-small transistors and on-chip communications with semiconductor lasers.

Quantum dots are vacancies (wells) that can confine excitons—bound electron-hole pairs—in a semiconductor to achieve properties that are superior to those of bulk materials. The Rice University researchers have added a new twist—leaving a single layer of carbon in the bottom of the well. The researchers reasoned that by removing islands of hydrogen from both sides of the sheets, tiny wells of conductive graphene, surrounded by the graphene insulator, will be left behind that could be used as quantum dots.

University Of Utah researchers have developed a method to form pristine carbon nanotubes and graphene films without using expensive and time consuming post processing steps and systems The graphene ribbon has a width in the range of 1 to 20 nanometers. The graphene nanoribbons are induced to curl into carbon nanotubes by atomic deposition.