Graphene production process: Chemical exfoliation

Chemical exfoliation: the process

The production of graphene by the chemical exfoliation process results in graphene with few layers (SLG to MLG).

The production route takes advantage of the fact that potassium intercalation compounds dissolve spontaneously in polar solvents.

Advantages and drawbacks

Intercalation of chemical compounds without covalent bonding enables graphene sheets to be separated without introducing functional groups onto the graphene particles.

What’s more, depending on the nature of the intercalation compounds, they can play a stabilizing role, without the need to add surfactants and without altering the properties of graphene. The choice of solvents and intercalation compounds is therefore crucial to obtaining stable, high quality dispersions.

The resulting graphene combines the advantages of the various families of graphene-based materials: high quality while retaining the versatility of a dispersion. Finally, this process can be transposed to industrial scale.

What to remember about the chemical exfoliation process?

This process is currently being industrialized by Carbon Waters, which has mastered this method. The innovation on which its expertise is based enables it to produce stable dispersions, opening up the possibility of using graphene for industrial applications.

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