"A few years ago when nanomaterials were hot, there was a lot of domestic 'nano +' concept hype, and this time 'graphene' is the same, many graphene products is a diffuse scam. " Despite the increasingly promising application of graphene, it is impossible to avoid being plagued by such claims.
In March 2015, the Chongqing Institute of Green Intelligent Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences announced the launch of a graphene cell phone called "ShadowChip SETTLERα", which, according to the propaganda at the time, had a light transmission rate of 97%, increased the charging rate of the phone by 40%, extended the battery life by 50%, and increased the energy density of the battery by 10%. Because of its association with graphene, the phone was priced as high as $2,499, even though it was only equivalent to a $1,000 configuration.
Eight months have passed and this graphene phone has not been sold in the market despite the announcement of the first 30,000 units at that time.
But people can buy other graphene products of various kinds. For example, Shengquan Group, a newly listed company, has already launched graphene socks and underwear in the market. According to the company's publicity, they have added biomass graphene "internal warming" fiber to their products, which is a new intelligent multifunctional composite fiber that "has the characteristics of activating immune cells, protecting ultraviolet rays, improving microcirculation, antibacterial and antibacterial, increasing temperature and increasing sunlight, and also deodorizing ".
According to the company's promotional presentation, they carbonize plant straw to extract graphene and use its superconductivity as a raw material for producing clothes. They plan to also launch smart bras, which can effectively prevent tumors and breast cancer by measuring subtle changes in women's chest temperature through built-in sensors, and also plan to apply them to military uniforms - currently, these so-called graphene products are pricey, with a pair of socks costing more than $50, a pair of underwear costing close to $300, and a graphene The price of a graphene belt needs to be nearly 600 yuan, while the heating suit is sold to more than 1700 yuan.
According to the reporter's understanding, graphene is currently divided into two main types: single-atom film graphene and graphene powder. The preparation of the former is mainly methane, acetylene and other carbon-containing gases as raw materials, the use of chemical vapor deposition synthesis, and graphite or straw has nothing to do.
Graphene powder, on the other hand, is the use of natural graphite, using concentrated acids and strong oxidants for oxidation, and then using expansion heat treatment to reduce to get, as for graphene extracted from straw, the claim that 15 pounds of corn cobs can extract a pound of graphene, in the opinion of many industry insiders is unheard of.
In addition to the obvious fraud graphene underwear, for a number of research institutes and enterprises keen to develop the "graphene battery", "graphene lithium battery" is also alleged to be lying.
At present, the practice of graphene application in the field of batteries, generally in the positive and negative electrodes of lithium batteries, adding graphene material. "This practice is obviously misleading." Recently, an article by Liu Guanwei, a researcher of Tsinghua Energy Internet, questioning the "graphene battery" has been circulating on the Internet.
In the article, titled "Is the legendary "graphene battery" technology a big lie? In the article, Liu Guanwei gives a clear view at the beginning.
Graphene battery" technology is close to non-existent, graphene can only theoretically improve the charging and discharging rate, but for the capacity (energy) to improve basically no help (expect "graphene battery" can solve the cell phone / electric car life of people to be disappointed), its gimmick is much more meaningful than The practical value is far greater than the gimmick.
According to Liu Guanwei, according to the classical electrochemical nomenclature, the lithium-ion battery used in general smartphones should be named "lithium cobaltate-graphite battery". The reason why it is called "lithium-ion battery" is because lithium ion plays a major role in it. "Strictly speaking, graphene is only in the battery to do auxiliary role, so you can not apply the graphene battery, directly called 'graphene battery'."
In Liu Guanwei's opinion, now the basic market, only graphene as a "conductive additive" applied to lithium batteries. But even the "additive" type of application, but also a lot of questions.
Graphene can be used as a conductive agent to promote the fast charging and discharging of lithium batteries, which can theoretically improve the performance of the multiplier, but if the dispersion process is not in place, the mixture is not uniform, everything is a building in the air; in addition, there are many inexpensive materials, it is not necessary to use the expensive graphene."
The reporter noted that Liu Guanwei's point of view is shared by many senior industry experts such as Zhang Yuanbo, its Lu, Lu Hongbin, professor of the Department of Polymer Science at Fudan University, and Yuan Guohui, professor of the Department of Applied Chemistry at the School of Chemical Engineering at Harbin Institute of Technology.
"By now who can come up with data? Who has made such a battery?" Its Lu also believes that "the positive and negative electrodes of the lithium battery are the structure of the layers, so under certain external conditions, in order to form the migration from the positive to the negative electrode. And graphene is a single-layer ring structure of carbon atoms, that is, its own chemical and physical properties determine it, will not form a separate negative electrode material for lithium batteries."
Many people are wasting their lives for this?
For the industry experts question, as the "China Graphene Industry Technology Innovation Strategy Alliance" Secretary-General, Li Yichun's statement is: "Although there is controversy in the industry, but science and technology innovation, anything can happen, some experts think it is impossible, many things have been achieved, and some experts are too arbitrary, but we have to have an open mind."
As of now, it is impossible to know the true nature of Qingdao's newly developed "world-leading graphene lithium battery", Huawei's response is "there is research on graphene, but not so soon as commercial." As the head of the "graphene super electric car battery" team at the Shanghai Institute of Silicate, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Huang Fuqiang's defense is that "people will come to different conclusions from different angles, but the essence is the same."
In fact, even Andre Geim, who won the Nobel Prize in 2010 for his discovery of graphene, is also uncomfortable with the current frenzy of graphene hype in China. There may be a suspicion of hype."
On the same day that Geim attended the conference, the 2015 Global Graphene Industry Research Report, premiered by the China Graphene Industry Technology Innovation Strategy Alliance, was also released, showing that China not only ranked first in the world in terms of the number of papers published on graphene research at the end of 2012, but also rose rapidly to the top in terms of the number of patents in the last three years.
However, in an interview with Chinese media, Geim was equally nonchalant in pointing out that half of the many published graphene papers will be discarded. On the other hand, many patents, especially those from universities, 90% of which are of little value, and 99% of which will eventually be invalidated, are also costly to maintain and many people are wasting their lives doing so.
"Although China ranks first in the world in terms of the number of graphene papers published, many research institutes do not know what the industry really wants, and the problem of disconnect between research and application is prominent." Kang Feiyu, director of the Shenzhen Graduate School of Tsinghua University and an expert on carbon materials, said publicly.
These questions do not stop the Chinese graphene practitioners. on January 16, Changzhou West Taihu Science and Technology Industrial Park held a signing ceremony for graphene projects to settle in Changzhou, and 21 graphene projects settled in Changzhou collectively. Changzhou West Taihu Science and Technology Industrial Park Party Secretary Liu Zhifeng said that Changzhou graphene industry is moving toward the goal of "building a 10 billion dollar scale industry".
There are many graphene industrial parks like Changzhou in China. According to the reporter's understanding, in Chongqing, Wuxi, Qingdao, Tangshan and other places, have formed a considerable scale of graphene industrial park. And more graphene industrial parks are expected to blossom one after another in 2016.
In Changzhou, an insider from 2D Carbon Technology Co., Ltd. told reporters that they were established in Changzhou in 2011 and have grown to 200 people by now, producing the world's first capacitive graphene touch screen in 2012. In the last two years, they also use the high thermal radiation efficiency of graphene films to develop some heatable clothes. They are also developing graphene composites, solar cells, wearable sensors and other directions. However, he admitted that these products actually have little to do with graphene.
It is the capital market that tasted the sweetness earlier than industrial parks, research institutes, universities and enterprises. Related data show that there are 60 listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen laying out graphene business, and in mid-August 2015, Del Home in Jiangsu announced its investment in graphene super lithium batteries and other projects. "graphene battery" concept of the company, the stock price as if on a rocket, more than two months rose 158.4%.
Long road to industrial commercialization
"Now the domestic graphene applications, the real graphene enterprises actually do not have a few, many are the original graphite and other carbon materials enterprises, or even completely unrelated enterprises under the banner of graphene, or speculation stocks, or for the national fund, the real graphene and can really make money almost no enterprise." Zhu Hongwei, a professor at the Center for Micro and Nano Mechanics, School of Materials, Tsinghua University, said.
And in Liu Guanwei's view, not only is much of the domestic graphene a scam, but there is also a lot of foreign project hype. In his article questioning the graphene battery, Liu Guanwei said that "the Spanish company Graphenano, which has a graphene battery," whether it claims to cooperate with three German automotive companies, or in the patent office website, can not find any valid information.
So, why is the "king of all new materials" in such an awkward and controversial situation?
According to the reporter's understanding, there are three reasons: on the one hand, both domestic and foreign, technically no industrial synthesis method to obtain large area single crystal graphene has been found; on the other hand, the graphene downstream industry chain has not been formed in the market, and the largest demand for graphene is only from major research institutes and laboratories, and no large amount of graphene has been put into industrial operation.
As early as 2010, researchers from Sungkyunkwan University and Samsung in South Korea produced a transparent bendable display consisting of multiple layers of graphene and polyester sheet substrate. At that time, the paper's corresponding author, Sungkyunkwan University professor Hong Byung-hee, suggested that their method could be used to manufacture graphene-based solar cells, touch sensors and flat panel displays. But he also admitted at the time that it was too early for large-scale manufacturing and commercialization - five years later, Hong's method is still stuck in the labs of Samsung and Sungkyunkwan University in South Korea.
The last aspect is the cost of graphene preparation. The cost of graphene preparation has been high due to the inability to mass produce, and the high cost has also hindered the pace of industrialization in the downstream market. Previously, the price of graphene was as high as 5,000 yuan per gram, which is more than 10 times more expensive than gold. "That bottle of seemingly unimpressive stuff is more expensive than gold, a few grams of graphene powder is worth hundreds of thousands of RMB, and we are transported separately from several people when we take the plane for fear of being confiscated by the security check." A startup company doing graphene research once described it as such.
In Canada, Grafoid and National University of Singapore set up the world's largest graphene research center (NUS) and launched a brand new production site in Ontario in 2014, a site occupying about 20,000 square feet to produce mainly graphene powder, and at that time, the head of the company said they could produce high-quality graphene at low prices and on a large scale. However, more than 1 year has passed and there is no new news about this base.
So, what really blocks the large-scale application of graphene is mainly the technical problem. Among them, the development of low-cost, large-scale, high-quality graphene consistency and reproducible synthesis methods is the biggest difficulty.
The familiar anecdote is that Andre Geim used transparent tape to get graphene. What people do not know is that the graphene size obtained by this method is very small, generally between 10 microns and 100 microns, and suffers from the deficiencies of low yield and high cost, which cannot meet the requirements of industrialization and large-scale production.
Later, graphite oxide reduction method is one of the most commonly used methods to prepare graphene. However, this method yields mainly graphene powder and has very many defects, poor electrical and mechanical properties, and requires graphite oxidation with concentrated sulfuric acid, whose industrial disposal of waste solution is a problem.
Since then, it has been thought that the preparation of graphene may not necessarily use graphite, but only try to make a thin film of carbon atoms. Chemical vapor deposition (CVD) was born, a method in which gases such as ethylene or acetylene are introduced into a reaction chamber, which is allowed to decompose at high temperatures, and after cooling, carbon atoms are deposited on the surface of the substrate to form graphene. Although CVD can meet the requirement of preparing large-area, high-quality graphene on a large scale, the problem is that the application of this method in graphene preparation is limited by its drawbacks such as high cost and complicated process.
Due to the huge difference in preparation methods, the price difference between graphene powder and CVD film is also thousands of times. For example, 1 gram of graphene powder costs less than $10, while 1 square meter of graphene film costs tens to hundreds of dollars, and its weight is actually less than 1 mg.
There is another major method - the solvent exfoliation method. Since the whole process of liquid-phase exfoliation does not introduce any defects on the surface of graphene, it provides a broad application prospect for its application in microelectronics, multifunctional composites, etc. The disadvantage is, again, the low yield.
Therefore, from the application point of view, graphene is currently in the storytelling stage both at home and abroad. "In addition to this, industrial standards for graphene in consumer electronics, such as size, uniformity and reliability, have not yet been determined, so the actual use of graphene in consumer electronics has not yet been shown." According to Zhu Hongwei, graphene can currently be used to make small-scale devices in the lab, but mass production and integration quality cannot be guaranteed. "At least there is no hope in sight yet."
In fact, even Geim himself, who has reservations about the way graphene is currently being commercialized, sees graphene as a primer that has led to the development of a wider range of two-dimensional materials. But for graphene, from a physics point of view, has reached a bottleneck, unless there is a greater breakthrough in the future, it is difficult to have further enhancements
Carbon is one of the most important elements with unique properties and is the basis of all life on Earth. Pure carbon can be as hard as diamond or as soft as graphite.
The material is called graphene because it is made from graphite and contains the double bond between carbon atoms, a fundamental characteristic of alkenes. Graphene actually exists in nature originally, but it is just difficult to peel off the single-layer structure. Graphene is stacked layer by layer as graphite, and a 1 mm thick graphite contains about 3 million layers of graphene. The layers are loosely attached to each other and slide easily, making the graphite very soft and easy to peel off. A light scratch of a pencil on a piece of paper could leave a trace of several layers of graphene.
Scientists theorized about graphene-like structures in the 1940s, but efforts to make single-layer graphene have been unsuccessful for a long time since, and it was thought that such a two-dimensional material could not be stable at room temperature. a paper published in the American journal Science in October 2004 overturned this knowledge. Andrei Heim and Konstantin Novoselov, who work at the University of Manchester in England, accomplished their "magic" with ordinary tape.
Welcome to visit our company website: www.manlybattery.com. If you have any interests in batteries, please feel free to contact us: info@manlybattery.com
