Facile and Diverse Graphene Manufacturing from Proprietary Arc Discharge Process
Authors: Dada Oluwaseun John 
Published: December 2020

Low cost, low defect and high-quality graphene have been produced in three simple exfoliation steps as a fully tested commercial concept. Low energy thermal arc-discharging expands the electrolytic graphite rod electrodes into hierarchical-like 3D graphene retaining the graphite structural order on a basal plane and chemical purity. Multi-size ball milling causes movement of the graphene materials in multi-shear directions, with optimized speed of the balls and lesser time. Micro-waving further separates the graphene sheets by “thermal expansion and release” mechanism utilizing thermally induced lattice vibrations. This also causes higher lattice order on basal plane improving directional and surface properties. The produced graphene (XRD 2theta = 26 degrees) has low defect (I(D)/I(G) between 0.05 and 0.2), retains chemical purity (between 0.56 and 2.4% change in oxygen content), and with comparatively optimized effective nano-sizes (ranging from 300nm to 35um). These properties make the graphene suitable for diverse applications, dispersibility in various solvents, conformability to flat semitransparent surfaces, and storable in concentrated slurries (>50 mg mL−1) or powder.

Keywords: Low Defect; 2D Planar; Arc Discharge Graphene; PPC Sonication; 5 Sec Microwaving; Exfoliation; Electronics.
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