At the Advanced Materials Show, AZoM spoke with James Sherrill from General Graphene about the future of graphene and how their novel production technique will lower costs to open up a whole new world of applications in the future.
Could you please introduce yourself and provide some background on General Graphene?
我的名字叫维格·谢里尔（Vig Sherrill），我是一名电气工程师，他很幸运地在我的职业生涯中创办了几家基于技术的公司。我于2014年在橡树岭国家实验室（Oak Ridge National Laboratories）介绍了石墨烯，伊万·沃拉斯科克（Ivan Vlassiouk）博士开发了一种在大气条件下以一致且可重复的质量生产石墨烯片的方法。这是一个很大的突破，因为目前的做法只能以少量的真空过程产生石墨烯。实际上，与石墨烯一起开玩笑的是，它可以做您需要做的任何事情 - 除了离开实验室。因此，在2016年，我和我的合作伙伴格雷格·埃里克森（Greg Erickson）开始了普通石墨烯，以一致且可再现的质量奇异地关注大面积石墨烯片的批量生产。我们之所以不知所措，是因为无论它多么伟大，如果您不能做到这一点，就无法使用它。直到2020年，我们甚至没有网站，因为我们想呆在雷达之下，避免炒作，并且不想说出我们无法证实。
Starting General Graphene was extremely difficult as we are a new materials-based company, and this is an area that most investors shy away from because of the long-time scales required for development. To give you an idea of what we were up against - let me give you our funding pitch to raise money: We're going to do something nobody's done before, we're going to do it in quantities and at costs that graphene experts said could not be done, we're going to do it for markets that do not exist - and we need $20 million just to see if it works. You can see that this was a tough sell.
好消息是，在我们展示了2017年的第一个小型原型之后，我们从Graphite India Ltd获得了投资，以完全开发商业卷到滚石石墨烯生产系统。我们现在正在运营3rdgeneration roll-to-roll graphene production system that came online in the middle of the pandemic last year. With our new production capabilities, we are now the world’s largest producer of large-area graphene sheets and are extremely excited to let the world know that we exist.
一般石墨烯creates graphene using a chemical vapor deposition (CVD) technique. What is this and how does it vary from other production methods?
There are basically two kinds of graphene. There's the particulate form (sometimes called nano-platelets) which is a few layers of graphene with crystal sizes measured in the nanometers. This is typically a very fine black powder - produced by various methods in bulk and typically sold by the gram or kilogram. Then there is CVD-produced graphene, which is typically produced on a copper substrate, is a single atom thick with crystal sizes in the millimeters, and is sold by the area, not weight. As a reference, the difference between the two forms of graphene is like the difference between ordinary sand and a silicon wafer. Both are made of silicon, but sand is very cheap and silicon wafers are extremely expensive. Both are useful - but in very different ways.
您听到的有关石墨烯的所有魔术内容基本上都是正确的 - 但仅在纳米级。它根本不会扩展到人的大小，这就是许多对石墨烯的失望（和炒作）的来源。人们听说石墨烯比钢强200到300倍，而在纳米级的情况下，它并未转化为人类规模的物体。抱歉，但是很快没有太空电梯。
如今，公司正在将少量的颗粒石墨烯添加到塑料和混凝土中，以使其更坚固，更耐用。相比之下，我们的CVD生产的石墨烯可用于电子，传感器，屏障膜，加热膜，甚至透明导体（如触摸屏）。作为参考，大多数传感元素都是数千个原子厚的 - 您可以想象一个只有一个原子厚的石墨烯传感器将更加敏感。这种新的薄度允许真正前所未有的灵敏度。
您制造石墨烯的过程与传统方法不同。您能对此扩展吗？
当石墨烯最初以薄板形式开发时，通常使用化学蒸气沉积（CVD）工艺在石英管（大约8英尺长，直径约8英尺，直径约8英尺，直径约为12英寸）的铜箔底物上生产。传统上，此过程非常缓慢，只产生了一小批量的石墨烯 - 您将一块铜（通常是在平方英尺附近）放入，您将真空吸真，您放入一些气体，将其加热到1000c以上，魔术发生，您会形成石墨烯，让它冷却，释放真空，然后将其拉出。您会看到，花费了很多精力和时间来生产少量石墨烯，这就是为什么CVD历史上昂贵的原因。
图片来源：通用石墨烯公司
While we share some of that process, our implementations are fundamentally different. We produce graphene on a continuous roll-to-roll process that is open to the atmosphere - you can literally stand on one side of our 30-meter machine and see right through it. We use quartz, similar gases and temperatures inside our system - but the way we position and heat the substrate in combination with the partial pressures of the gases flowing in and out of our system makes the entire platform extremely modular and scalable. We have quite a few patents on our processes and these breakthroughs have allowed us to reduce production costs by more than three orders of magnitude since 2020. It is the only system today capable of continuous graphene production at a consistent and reproducible quality and at industrial price points.
有趣的是，我们的整个过程开发归结为真正理解制造石墨烯的科学。亚博老虎机网登录一旦我们真正理解这一点，它就成为了扩展大规模生产的工程努力。为了保持这一点，我们的CVD制造线的第四代已经在图纸上。
凭借石墨烯的所有精彩特性 - 为什么我们在行业中没有看到它？
In about 2010, if you were to try to buy a square meter of graphene, it was over a million dollars. We jokingly said at the time that the only thing more expensive on the planet per weight was antimatter. Since then, we have brought down the costs by five orders of magnitude, and with our current cost structures - we can be well under $100 a square meter. We feel this is still just the beginning, as our technology will take us significantly less than that in the coming years.
亨利·福特（Henry Ford）曾经说过：“如果我问顾客他们想要什么，他们会说更快的马”。因此，不一定是客户认为他们想要的东西，而是石墨烯可以帮助他们解决的问题，或者可以以他们甚至没有想到的方式利用石墨烯的属性。我们与客户之间的团队合作确实是将石墨烯应用于他们的市场的。我们的客户密切了解他们的产品和市场 - 我们密切了解石墨烯。只有一起工作，我们才能利用石墨烯的独特属性来实现新的性能水平。
A great example of a completely new market for graphene is using it as a simple wall heater for homes or even cars. Home wall heating has been around for a long time in more or less the same form – either wires or tubes running up and down behind a wall that heats the back side. These are usually very inefficient, difficult to implement, difficult to repair, and severely limit what you can do to a wall. We have a very nice demo using a few sheets of our graphene on the outside of the wall. We put it on with wallpaper glue and simply paint over it. Being so thin, you simply don’t know it is there. By applying a low voltage these thin sheets can provide up to 50 watts/square foot of heat. That is quite an astounding number considering the square footage of a typical wall. Further, by being on the outside of the wall, it is extremely efficient. If you had asked me two years ago if that would be an application for graphene, I would have said ‘no way’. In short, we strongly believe that having graphene available at industrial quantities and price points will enable markets that we simply haven’t even thought of.
石墨烯即将到来，这将需要一些时间才能进入该行业，但它可能会改变我们拥有的大多数事情。
石墨烯是可持续材料吗？
生产我们的石墨烯是一个非常可持续的过程。我们需要生产石墨烯的只是空气，水和电 - 稍微抛出了一点CH4。
石墨烯也具有生物相容性 - 就像纯碳一样。实际上，热解碳涂层的心脏瓣膜已使用了40多年，而热解碳基本上由石墨烯组成。那么石墨烯会带来可持续性和生物相容性吗？绝对地。
What is next for General Graphene?
我们现在的最高目标是让世界知道石墨烯的工业量，质量一致，可再现的质量以及适合应用程序的价格点。我们还在TN区域以外扩展生产能力。我并不是自由地告诉您哪里，但我可以说，并非我们所有的新网站都会在美国。
尽管我们现在处于几个市场，但由于石墨烯的成本下降了新市场，因此很难说我们将进入哪些未来市场。我们是一家纯粹的游戏石墨烯公司，为合作伙伴提供工业石墨烯和应用程序开发。例如，我们不制造生物传感器 - 我们为生物传感器制造石墨烯，并帮助我们的客户将石墨烯集成到其传感器中。这意味着我们的可能性是无穷无尽的，但也没有定义。
As far as future opportunities go - there are so many applications where graphene is a great fit but it will be some time before the production costs become compatible with the market demands.
一个例子是可生物降解的食物包装。国际食品包装提供商与我们联系，他们想提高可持续性。他们想将我们的石墨烯涂在纸上来代替典型的塑料包装。这是一个很棒的想法，因为石墨烯是一个很棒的障碍，并且像纸一样完全可生物降解。但是，在此阶段，它不符合我们的成本模型，也是您将看到石墨烯所使用的一个想法的一个例子。
关于James Sherrill
Sherrill先生已经成立了多家高科技公司。一名演变成公开募股，两人的售价超过140毫米，有些盈利且正在进行中。
He has raised more than $60 million in venture capital with his companies producing more than $600 million in revenue. His most exciting company to date is General Graphene which is the world leader in large area sheet-based graphene production.
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