The thinnest material surprises life

In the recently held “2011 China Science and Technology Entrepreneurship Plan Contest”, the graphene industrialization technology of the team of Liu Zhaoping of the Institute of New Energy Technology, Ningbo Institute of Materials, won the “Overseas Talent Entrepreneurship Award” and won the biggest prize of 1 million yuan. Caused widespread concern in all sectors of society. People can not help asking: what is graphene? What is the significance of this unfamiliar industrialization technology?

"Graphene is actually a single-layered graphite. It is a two-dimensional crystal composed of carbon atoms and peeled off from graphite material. It has only one layer of carbon atoms and is the thinnest material in the world." Liu Zhaoping, a researcher, told reporters. "In 2004, Heim and his colleague Konstantin Novoselov made graphene. Graphene has since become the focus of attention in the scientific and industrial communities. The two won the 2010 Nobel Prize in physics."

The reason why graphene is so interesting is that this product has an extremely wide application prospect in many fields such as information technology, new energy, functional composite materials and even biomedicine. Liu Zhaoping explained that graphene is likely to replace silicon as the basic material for next-generation ultra-high-frequency transistors and is widely used in high-performance integrated circuits and new types of nanoelectronic devices. It may also be widely used as an additive in new high-strength composite materials. . Graphene's good electrical conductivity and high light transmission make it unique in the application of transparent conductive films.

“The application of graphene industrialization technology will bring many amazing changes to our lives. For example, we all know that Apple’s mobile phone has a thin screen, but if it is made of graphene ingredients With this screen, we can fold and use the screen directly, and the transparency is also very good, like the transparent curved and suspended virtual display in the movie “Avatar.” In addition, it can also be used to make graphene power batteries. Nowadays, ordinary battery charging for battery cars and electric vehicles usually takes 1 to 3 hours. Graphene power lithium batteries can be quickly charged within 10 minutes, and the battery performance will be greatly improved and the lifespan will be longer, said Liu Zhaoping.

The tempting market prospect has prompted scientists from all over the world to invest in the basic and applied research of graphene with great enthusiasm. In recent years, the development of this technology has seen a rapid development. However, due to the limited and non-reproducible graphene resources, the preparation cost is very expensive, and the production cost is 5,000 yuan per gram, which is an insurmountable obstacle in the development of graphene industrialization. Therefore, it has become a common challenge for scientists to overcome the low-cost preparation of graphene.

To overcome this worldwide problem, Liu Zhaoping's research fellows and his team are eager to devote themselves to arduous research. Under the support of the important direction project of the Knowledge Innovation Project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, after more than two years of efforts, a major breakthrough in the low-cost, large-scale production of graphene was successfully achieved. In July of this year, they cooperated with a Ningbo company to build the world’s first pilot production line with 30 tons of graphene per year with complete independent intellectual property rights, and successfully passed the pilot test. From the results of the pilot test, not only the product quality has reached the international advanced level, but also the product price can be directly reduced to 3,000 yuan per kilogram, with a strong market competitiveness. Now the project team has received orders from foreign customers.