Kids, do not try this at home: scientists have found that they can create high-quality graphene sheets using a kitchen blender and ordinary dishwasher detergent.

The findings, published in the journal Nature Materials, outline a fresh way to create large amounts of this remarkable material – which could speed up the process of putting them into future computers, smart coatings and solar cells.

Graphene is a two-dimensional lattice of hexagons made up of graphite, the most stable form of carbon under standard conditions. The carbon atoms join to create these single-layer, crystalline sheets with extraordinary properties. It’s strong but light (which is why it’s used in carbon-fibre bicycle frames), conducts both heat and electricity extremely well and is nearly transparent in its purest form.

It’s a “wonder material”, according to the American Physical Society, “a million times thinner than paper, stronger than diamond, more conductive than copper.”

….“The commercial development of graphene and related two-dimensional materials is at present restrained by the lack of production techniques ready for industrial scale-up,” James Tour of Rice University in Houston wrote in a commentary on the study.

A team of scientists led out of Trinity College, Dublin, came up with a way to take graphite powder, dump it in a laboratory blender with a surfactant mixture and create pure sheets of graphene at far larger quantities than previous methods, the scientists said.

In the future, with scaled-up processes, the production rate could easily be hundreds of times higher than many current outfits.

To test exactly how robust their method was, the scientists also tried the method using a Kenwood kitchen blender and dishwashing fluid and the process largely still worked.

“This clearly shows that even very crude mixers can produce well exfoliated graphene,” study co-author Jonathan Coleman and colleagues wrote in the paper.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/scientists-create-graphene-in-kitchen-blender-20140423-zqy2p.html#ixzz2zgBoNgj1