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Advantages and Disadvantages of Different Approaches of Graphene Synthesis

In this article, we are going to discuss advantages and disadvantages of different approaches of Graphene Synthesis.
Submitted by Vandana Sharma, on November 15, 2017

Every technology has some advances and drawbacks. Various methods of graphene synthesis are discussed here. Every approach is different in terms of technology used, which has its own advantages and disadvantages which is discussed in this section.

Advantages

• The exfoliation methods provide graphene of very high quality and purity. These methods are perfect for laboratory research due to their simplicity and low complexity. The size of the obtained flakes and controllability are very poor for industrial production.
• On contrary, if we consider graphene growth on surfaces, it allows a more or less unlimited size of the graphene layers and a high controllability, which makes these methods applicable for industrial production. These methods are unsuitable for laboratory research of graphene as the purity of material thus obtained is not very high. As epitaxial growth technique is inferior to CVD method which is being already used.
• When comparing the electrochemical method to that of reduction of oxidized graphite into graphene oxide, the structural configuration is not merely damaged and the material exhibits high electrical conductivity without involving any further reduction treatment.
• The electrochemical method produces high-purity, high-yield and comparatively large size graphene sheet than other chemical exfoliation approaches like liquid-phase exfoliation of graphite by extensive sonication or intercalation and expansion of graphite.
• The prepared graphene sheets can be dispersed in organic solvents in order to obtain liquid phase solution. Moreover, the organic solvents like DMF, used in this work, can be easily evaporated at 150°C. In addition to this, solution phase suspension permits the chemical functionalization, such as the application in the polymer-graphene functional composite.

Disadvantages

• Liquid phase exfoliation yield low throughput.
• The graphene produced consists of certain structural and manufacturing defects. So purity of graphene so produced couldn’t be assured.
• In electrochemical method, the impurities in the form of unwashed salt could be found in between graphene layers which affect the conductivity of graphene.
• Also one can’t control the thickness parameter as is controlled by epitaxial graphene growth process or the CVD approach.
• A better understanding of parameters such as breakdown voltage, electron velocity, and saturation current is needed to allow a complete benchmark of this material and an evaluation of its potential performance.