Recently an Innovative, environment friendly and cheap separation technology has been developed by the research team of Prof. Byung Jin Cho and Prof. Taek soo Kim. The research was initiated by Korea Research Foundation and the Ministry of Education and Science supported by Research Support Program and the Global Frontier program. It has been a trouble with commercialization of graphene blended over a wide area on metals that it can’t be separated from the metal.

For the first time, exact results have been generated about the graphene surface material and the interfacial graphene adhesive energy. Due to this the catalyst metal can be used infinite times rather than just once hence being efficient and eco friendly. There are many ways like for solar cells, for display in which wide area graphene synthesized onto catalyst metal is used. Research has been going on in this field but if we want to use this wide area graphine then without damage it has to be removed from the catalyst metal. So far in order to separate graphene, chemical substances have been used to melt the metal, which is very difficult and also creates harmful wastes. Since it’s a complicated process, the costs are also high and metal becomes useless.

By measuring the synthesized graphene interfacial adhesive energy, it was learnt by the research teams of Professors Byung Jin Cho and Taek Su Kim that it can be removed easily. In fact, the graphene removed mechanically was used successfully in the direct creation of molecular electronic devices. As a result, the manufacturing process was shortened of graphene and it was also confirmed that the reuse of metallic board was possible multiple times paving a new, ecofriendly and cheap method of graphene manufacturation.

Via: KAIST

Original Article on EcoFriend