School of Chemistry, Physics, and Mechanical Engineering, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane, Queensland 4000, Australia.
Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences (BNLMS), College of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, P. R. China.
Nanoscale. 2016 May 19;8(20):10511-27. doi: 10.1039/c5nr06537b.
Graphene, a newly discovered and extensively investigated material, has many unique and extraordinary properties which promise major technological advances in fields ranging from electronics to mechanical engineering and food production. Unfortunately, complex techniques and high production costs hinder commonplace applications. Scaling of existing graphene production techniques to the industrial level without compromising its properties is a current challenge. This article focuses on the perspectives and challenges of scalability, equipment, and technological perspectives of the plasma-based techniques which offer many unique possibilities for the synthesis of graphene and graphene-containing products. The plasma-based processes are amenable for scaling and could also be useful to enhance the controllability of the conventional chemical vapour deposition method and some other techniques, and to ensure a good quality of the produced graphene. We examine the unique features of the plasma-enhanced graphene production approaches, including the techniques based on inductively-coupled and arc discharges, in the context of their potential scaling to mass production following the generic scaling approaches applicable to the existing processes and systems. This work analyses a large amount of the recent literature on graphene production by various techniques and summarizes the results in a tabular form to provide a simple and convenient comparison of several available techniques. Our analysis reveals a significant potential of scalability for plasma-based technologies, based on the scaling-related process characteristics. Among other processes, a greater yield of 1 g × h(-1) m(-2) was reached for the arc discharge technology, whereas the other plasma-based techniques show process yields comparable to the neutral-gas based methods. Selected plasma-based techniques show lower energy consumption than in thermal CVD processes, and the ability to produce graphene flakes of various sizes reaching hundreds of square millimetres, and the thickness varying from a monolayer to 10-20 layers. Additional factors such as electrical voltage and current, not available in thermal CVD processes could potentially lead to better scalability, flexibility and control of the plasma-based processes. Advantages and disadvantages of various systems are also considered.
石墨烯是一种新发现并得到广泛研究的材料，具有许多独特而非凡的特性，有望在从电子到机械工程和食品生产等领域取得重大技术进步。不幸的是，复杂的技术和高生产成本阻碍了其广泛应用。在不影响其性能的情况下，将现有的石墨烯生产技术扩展到工业规模是当前的挑战。本文重点关注基于等离子体的技术的可扩展性、设备和技术观点的视角和挑战，这些技术为石墨烯和含石墨烯产品的合成提供了许多独特的可能性。基于等离子体的工艺易于扩展，也可用于增强传统化学气相沉积方法和其他一些技术的可控性，并确保所生产石墨烯的质量良好。我们在潜在的大规模生产背景下，考察了等离子体增强石墨烯生产方法的独特特征，包括基于感应耦合和电弧放电的技术，考虑了适用于现有工艺和系统的通用扩展方法。这项工作分析了大量关于各种技术生产石墨烯的最新文献，并以表格形式总结了结果，以便对几种可用技术进行简单方便的比较。我们的分析表明，基于与扩展相关的工艺特性，基于等离子体的技术具有很大的扩展潜力。在其他工艺中，电弧放电技术达到了 1 g×h(-1)m(-2)的更高产量，而其他基于等离子体的技术显示出与中性气体基方法相当的工艺产量。选定的基于等离子体的技术显示出比热 CVD 工艺更低的能耗，并且能够生产各种尺寸的石墨烯薄片，达到数百平方毫米，厚度从单层到 10-20 层不等。热 CVD 工艺中不可用的一些附加因素，如电压和电流，可能会导致等离子体工艺具有更好的可扩展性、灵活性和可控性。还考虑了各种系统的优缺点。
