3D printing ushered in Super material "graphene"

Graphene has extraordinary thermal conductivity and conductivity. Since it was first successfully manufactured in 2004, it has been favored by the scientific and technological community as a subversive new material. Because of its excellent characteristics, many people think that the 21st century will become the "graphene era."

Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and researcher of the Institute of Metals of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Cheng Huiming, believes that graphene has a high conductivity and a very stable chemical structure. It is an ideal electrode material for mobile batteries and power sources. It can be further combined with electronic components and electronic equipment to increase the power storage rate of other power storage equipment.

Another wonder of graphene is that it is "zero osmosis"-all gases and liquids can not be penetrated. It has the ability to "insert the needle and pour the water." For example, coating the hull with graphene, heavy metal ions in seawater, etc., can not penetrate this film to corrode the hull.

There's more to the surprise. Graphene is highly adsorptive and scientists are studying its use as a filtration device for desalination and sewage treatment. It is almost completely transparent and has a very good light permeability and is suitable as a raw material for transparent electronic products.

When graphene encounters 3D printing

Although most desktop 3D printers are currently limited to plastic wires, many manufacturing experts believe that more of the creative potential of 3D printing technology lies in a wider range of other materials and application features, such as graphene materials that we are discussing now.

On February 9, 2016, scientists at the LawrenceLivermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and the University of California, Santa Cruz, announced that they used ultra-light graphene gel 3D to print supercapacitors for the first time. This opens the door for product designers to use efficient energy storage systems for smartphones, wearable devices, implantable devices, electric cars and wireless sensors more freely and without design restrictions.

It is understood that LLNL's research team used a 3D printing process called direct ink writing (direct ink writing) and the laboratory's own design of graphene oxide composite ink to print microstructures, creating super-capacitors that can retain energy. It is 10 to 100 times thinner than the similar capacitance currently manufactured using electrodes.

This graphene "wire" can print microstructures by squeezing out the first 3D. Once the graphene object is printed into a specified structure, the graphene object needs to be heated to ensure that it has all the properties of graphene. After that, these 3D printed objects can be used for various processes and still maintain their graphene properties.

On January 28, 2016, the results were published in the magazine NanoLetters. This technology breaks through the limitations of 2D manufacturing and uses it to create a variety of complex 3D structures. This technology allows us to leave a small space in the smartphone for the energy storage system. The Super capacitor charges very quickly and theoretically takes only a few minutes or seconds to complete the full charge.

Another noteworthy event about the combination of 3D printing technology and graphene is that on November 23, 2015, the well-known 3D printing material company Graphen3DLab announced to the outside world through its e-commerce website the launch of a new 3D printing material GraphenFlex Foam (graphene flexible foam).

GrapheneFlexFoam is a multi-layer independent flexible graphene foam that combines conductive elastic composites with ultra-light graphene foams. This foam is actually a highly conductive three-dimensional chemical vapor deposition (CVD) that combines with composite materials and thus possesses multiple excellent properties of graphene. As a soft foam, the material has light weight, reconfigurable, porous structure, and is easy to use and handle.

GrapheneFlexFoam is a high-quality basic material in the electrode manufacturing of ion batteries. It is very suitable for wearing electronic products because electronic devices, sensors, and wires are all in great need of this flexible wearable material.

The future is good, "ENE" looks infinite

As a highly technical carbon material, graphene may bring a revolution in touch screens, semiconductors, photovoltaics, lithium batteries, optical devices,special, military engineering, LEDs, lasers, and other fields. However, graphene is not yet industrialized due to high prices. Some analysts believe that once graphene is industrialized, its output value is at least more than one trillion. If research and development and application go well, we may soon need to use this material all the time.

At present, the graphene industry is included in the national strategic layout. "Made in China 2025" selected 10 major advantages and strategic industries to achieve key breakthroughs. In the first key area of technology roadmap, graphene materials became one of the four major areas of frontier materials. In addition, the "13th Five-Year Plan" new energy vehicles are key projects, and graphene and other new materials are also listed as key development areas.

The industry believes that with graphene, humans can develop next-generation energy solutions such as solar cells or mobile phone batteries that can be fully charged in minutes. Some even speculate that the new 3D printing ultracapacitors could be used in the future to create unique electronic products that are currently difficult to manufacture or even impossible to implement in other ways, such as fully customized smartphones or folding devices. Its performance will also reach an unprecedented level.

Not only in energy storage systems, graphene has unique advantages in detecting food toxins, environmental pollution, specific viruses and bacteria, for example, attaching graphene oxide to protein-like structures of specific toxins produces an enhanced signal. In order to detect toxins by highly sensitive sensors, the detection capability is 10 times that of ordinary sensors. In addition, graphene can also be used in biomedical applications such as drug delivery, cancer treatment and biosensing. Graphene has many unique properties such as greater surface area, biocompatibility and chemical stability, which makes graphene Has great research potential and is highly anticipated.

Graphene new materials are widely used, especially Graphene reinforced metal structure materials have a very high application value in the next generation of aircraft development,special engine high-temperature components manufacturing, and future high-speed aircraft development. At present, a large number of aluminum alloys containing graphene materials have been selected for structures such as the C919 and B777 aircraft fuselage and wings, which will help further reduce the weight of the fuselage structure, increase its service life, and significantly reduce manufacturing costs.

According to sources, Spanish Graphenano and its Chinese partner Zhengtai recently also introduced graphene polymer batteries. The batteries are said to allow electric vehicles to travel 800 kilometers in a row and charge within minutes. The batteries can also be used for domestic use. Automobile industry, Even bicycles, drones, pacemakers and so on. The company hopes the cells will be prototyped by mid-2016 and will be operational at the end of the year.

In addition to all this, the overwhelming media coverage gives us the impression that graphene has changed all aspects of our lives: for example, to produce waterproof membranes to solve the global water shortage problem; Replacing silicon in current electronic products provides stronger performance in smaller volumes.

Too much hype is a hurt.

In addition to being inedible, inedible and heat-resistant, graphene seems to be omnipotent. In the past, we met some retail graphene underwear and graphene waist protection at the exhibition, which is almost reducing the image of graphene. In China, people can already buy a variety of graphene products. The new three-board listing company Shengquan Group has already launched graphene socks and underwear on the market. The company claims that it added the biomass graphene "internal heating" fiber to the product. This is a brand new smart multifunctional composite fiber with features such as activating immune cells, protecting ultraviolet rays, improving microcirculation, antibacterial inhibition, and warming and Yang. Can also deodorize.

At present, the domestic graphene market is very "hot", but behind the "hot" should also see insufficient, some companies directly use graphene as a publicity and sales gimmick. Too many graphene app stir-fry concepts now, either to borrow graphene to raise stocks, or to use graphene concepts to brag to their products, are not really scientific graphene.

From an application point of view, graphene is still in the storytelling stage. The degree of development can only be said to be in line with expectations, and in China, the combination of production and research is even lower than expected. Wangzhihua, a professor at Tsinghua University, stated in public: "Graphene is used in the IC (self-invented integrated circuit) industry and is empty talk for five years. "You know, excessive speculation is actually a kind of harm.

Many researchers pointed out that graphene, as a new material, really went to the market and the process was "bright prospects and twists and turns." The first is limited to material production. To commercialize graphene, it is necessary to produce low-cost, high-quality graphene products. However, producing this graphene is not easy. There are still many technical challenges that can not be overcome by mass production and large-scale production.

At present, the development of graphene industry in China still has problems such as high production costs, product quality to be improved, and insufficient upstream and downstream interaction. The graphene industry lacks a unified national standard, industry standard, and enterprise standard. There is no scientific consensus on the quality, preparation process, testing equipment, and methods of graphene. The way forward for the Chinese graphene industry requires not only national guidance, but also sufficient time and patience.

The page contains the contents of the machine translation.