DIY 3D Graphene From Sugar

Don’t kniw what I’d do with graphene foam, but it looks easy to make.

https://techfragments.com/3d-graphene-bubbles-blown-sugar/

Three Dimensional Graphene created with Bubbles Blown in Sugar
Author: James Anderson Published: January 24, 2014

Researchers from Japan’s World Premier International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics have developed a method of making 3D graphene using bubbles blown in a melt polymeric glucose. The ensuing 3D graphene has excellent conductivity.
[…]

The research team created a syrup of ordinary sugar and ammonium chloride. Then they heated the syrup, creating a glucose-based polymer called melanoidin.

The melanoidin was then blown into bubbles using gases released by the ammonium. The highest quality end-product came from a balance of equal ammonium decomposition and glucose polymerization during this stage.

As the bubbles formed, the remaining syrup drained out of the bubble walls, leaving within intersections of three bubbles.

Strutted Graphene
When heated further, under deoxidization and dehydrogenation, the melanoidin gradually graphitized to form ‘strutted graphene’, a coherent 3D structure made up of graphene membranes linked by graphene strut frameworks, which resulted from original bubble walls and intersectional skeletons respectively.

The bubble structure allows free movement of electrons throughout the network, meaning that the graphene retains full conductivity. Not only this, but the mechanical strength and elasticity of the 3D graphene is extraordinary robust; the team were able to compress it down to 80% of its original size with little loss of conductive properties or stability.

So why are we not seeing graphene everywhere?

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About E.M.Smith

A technical managerial sort interested in things from Stonehenge to computer science. My present "hot buttons' are the mythology of Climate Change and ancient metrology; but things change...
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5 Responses to DIY 3D Graphene From Sugar

  1. p.g.sharrow says:

    This sounds like an excellent condenser storage structure to me. Super capacitor ?

  2. E.M.Smith says:

    You can make supercapacitors with graphene, so maybe… likely?

  3. newscaper says:

    Re supercapacitors… sooo many technologies are waiting on cheap, lightweight and/or compact high density storage for electricity: simpler solar installs freed from the grid (even if just for backup purposes), untethered mobile robots that can operate all day, etc.

  4. andysaurus says:

    Sounds like honeycomb to me. What happens when you cover it in chocolate?

  5. Tony McKenna says:

    I like the sound of intersectional skeletons

Comments are closed.