Rice University chemists grow graphene from food, insects, and waste

Chemical and Engineering News : A team of chemists at Rice University has shown how to prepare graphene from everyday materials, including grass, a cockroach leg, bulk polystyrene, chocolate, and even Girl Scout cookies . As detailed in a paper published online at ACS Nano, James Tour and colleagues placed a solid sample on copper foil in a quartz boat and briefly heated the material to 1050 °C under a low-pressure hydrogen–argon flow. Graphene formed on the back side of the foil, while a residue of other elements remained on the sample side. Graphene has been touted as a miracle material for its toughness and conductivity since its discovery by Nobel Prize–winning scientists Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov. Tour, who wanted to show that graphene can be made from just about anything with carbon, hopes that production costs will drop quickly as commercial interests develop methods to manufacture it in bulk.