james tour graphene

Jan. 27, 2020

Rice lab turns trash into valuable graphene in a flash, ‘green’ process promises pristine graphene in bulk using waste food, plastic and other materials.

HOUSTON – (Jan. 27, 2020) – That banana peel, turned into graphene , can help facilitate a massive reduction of the environmental impact of concrete and other building materials. While you're at it, toss in those plastic empties.

A new process introduced by the Rice University lab of chemist James Tour can turn bulk quantities of just about any carbon source into valuable graphene flakes. The process is quick and cheap; Tour said the "flash graphene" technique can convert a ton of coal, food waste or plastic into graphene for a fraction of the cost used by other bulk graphene-producing methods.

“This is a big deal,” Tour said. “The world throws out 30% to 40% of all food, because it goes bad, and plastic waste is of worldwide concern. We've already proven that any solid carbon-based matter, including mixed plastic waste and rubber tires, can be turned into graphene.”

As reported in Nature , flash graphene is made in 10 milliseconds by heating carbon-containing materials to 3,000 Kelvin (about 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit). The source material can be nearly anything with carbon content. Food waste, plastic waste, petroleum coke, coal, wood clippings and biochar are prime candidates, Tour said. “With the present commercial price of graphene being $67,000 to $200,000 per ton, the prospects for this process look superb,” he said.

Tour said a concentration of as little as 0.1% of flash graphene in the cement used to bind concrete could lessen its massive environmental impact by a third. Production of cement reportedly emits as much as 8% of human-made carbon dioxide every year.

“By strengthening concrete with graphene, we could use less concrete for building, and it would cost less to manufacture and less to transport,” he said. “Essentially, we’re trapping greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane that waste food would have emitted in landfills. We are converting those carbons into graphene and adding that graphene to concrete, thereby lowering the amount of carbon dioxide generated in concrete manufacture. It’s a win-win environmental scenario using graphene.”

“Turning trash to treasure is key to the circular economy,” said co-corresponding author Rouzbeh Shahsavari, an adjunct assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering and of materials science and nanoengineering at Rice and president of C-Crete Technologies. “Here, graphene acts both as a 2D template and a reinforcing agent that controls cement hydration and subsequent strength development.”

In the past, Tour said, “graphene has been too expensive to use in these applications. The flash process will greatly lessen the price while it helps us better manage waste.”

“With our method, that carbon becomes fixed,” he said. “It will not enter the air again.”

The process aligns nicely with Rice’s recently announced Carbon Hub initiative to create a zero-emissions future that repurposes hydrocarbons from oil and gas to generate hydrogen gas and solid carbon with zero emission of carbon dioxide. The flash graphene process can convert that solid carbon into graphene for concrete, asphalt, buildings, cars, clothing and more, Tour said.

Flash Joule heating for bulk graphene, developed in the Tour lab by Rice graduate student and lead author Duy Luong, improves upon techniques like exfoliation from graphite and chemical vapor deposition on a metal foil that require much more effort and cost to produce just a little graphene.

Even better, the process produces “ turbostratic ” graphene, with misaligned layers that are easy to separate. “A-B stacked graphene from other processes, like exfoliation of graphite, is very hard to pull apart,” Tour said. “The layers adhere strongly together. But turbostratic graphene is much easier to work with because the adhesion between layers is much lower. They just come apart in solution or upon blending in composites.

“That’s important, because now we can get each of these single-atomic layers to interact with a host composite,” he said.

The lab noted that used coffee grounds transformed into pristine single-layer sheets of graphene.

Bulk composites of graphene with plastic, metals, plywood, concrete and other building materials would be a major market for flash graphene, according to the researchers, who are already testing graphene-enhanced concrete and plastic.

The flash process happens in a custom-designed reactor that heats material quickly and emits all noncarbon elements as gas. “When this process is industrialized, elements like oxygen and nitrogen that exit the flash reactor can all be trapped as small molecules because they have value,” Tour said.

He said the flash process produces very little excess heat, channeling almost all of its energy into the target. “You can put your finger right on the container a few seconds afterwards,” Tour said. “And keep in mind this is almost three times hotter than the chemical vapor deposition furnaces we formerly used to make graphene, but in the flash process the heat is concentrated in the carbon material and none in a surrounding reactor.

“All the excess energy comes out as light, in a very bright flash, and because there aren’t any solvents, it’s a super clean process,” he said.

Luong did not expect to find graphene when he fired up the first small-scale device to find new phases of material, beginning with a sample of carbon black. “This started when I took a look at a Science paper talking about flash Joule heating to make phase-changing nanoparticles of metals,” he said. But Luong quickly realized the process produced nothing but high-quality graphene.

Atom-level simulations by Rice researcher and co-author Ksenia Bets confirmed that temperature is key to the material’s rapid formation. “We essentially speed up the slow geological process by which carbon evolves into its ground state, graphite,” she said. “Greatly accelerated by a heat spike, it is also stopped at the right instant, at the graphene stage.

“It is amazing how state-of-the-art computer simulations, notoriously slow for observing such kinetics, reveal the details of high temperature-modulated atomic movements and transformation,” Bets said.

Tour hopes to produce a kilogram (2.2 pounds) a day of flash graphene within two years, starting with a project recently funded by the Department of Energy to convert U.S.-sourced coal. “This could provide an outlet for coal in large scale by converting it inexpensively into a much-higher-value building material,” he said.

Tour has a grant from the Department of Energy to scale up the flash graphene process, which will be co-funded by the start-up company, Universal Matter Ltd.

Co-authors of the paper include Rice graduate students Wala Ali Algozeeb, Weiyin Chen, Paul Advincula, Emily McHugh, Muqing Ren and Zhe Wang; postdoctoral researcher Michael Stanford; academic visitors Rodrigo Salvatierra and Vladimir Mancevski; Mahesh Bhatt of C-Crete Technologies, Stafford, Texas; and Rice assistant research professor Hua Guo. Boris Yakobson, the Karl F. Hasselmann Chair of Engineering and a professor of materials science and nanoengineering and of chemistry, is co-corresponding author.

Tour is the T.T. and W.F. Chao Chair in Chemistry as well as a professor of computer science and of materials science and nanoengineering at Rice.

The Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the National Science Foundation supported the research.

Read the paper at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-1938-0 .

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-1938-0

This news release can be found online at https://news.rice.edu/2020/01/27/rice-lab-turns-trash-into-valuable-graphene-in-a-flash/

Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews .

https://youtu.be/GzDrnoGdLO4

Produced by Brandon Martin/Rice University

https://youtu.be/hzm5AMPFMqs

Credit: Tour Group/Rice University

Related materials:

Graphene at 15: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.9b06778

Tour Group: http://www.jmtour.com

Department of Chemistry: https://chemistry.rice.edu

Wiess School of Natural Sciences: http://natsci.rice.edu

Images for download:

https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2019/10/1111_FLASH-1-WEB.jpg

Graduate student Duy Luong prepares a sample of carbon black for conversion through the flash graphene technique created at Rice University. (Credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)

https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2019/10/1111_FLASH-2-WEB.jpg

Carbon black powder turns into graphene in a burst of light and heat through a technique developed at Rice University. Flash graphene turns any carbon source into the valuable 2D material in 10 milliseconds. (Credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)

https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2019/10/1111_FLASH-3-WEB.jpg

In a flash, carbon black turns into graphene through a technique developed by Rice University scientists. The scalable process promises to quickly turn carbon from any source into bulk graphene. From left: undergraduate intern Christina Crassas, chemist James Tour and graduate students Paul Advincula and Duy Luong. (Credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)

https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2019/10/1111_FLASH-4-WEB.jpg

Rice University chemist James Tour, left, and graduate student Duy Luong show a sample of pure turbostratic graphene just converted through the flash graphene technique developed in Tour’s lab. The researchers said the process can be scaled up to produce industrial-scale quantities of the valuable material from any carbon source. (Credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)

https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2020/01/1111_FLASH-5-WEB.jpg

Rice University scientists are turning waste into turbostratic graphene via a process they say can be scaled up to produce industrial-scale quantities. (Credit: Rouzbeh Shahsavari/C-Crete Group)

Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation’s top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,962 undergraduates and 3,027 graduate students, Rice’s undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is just under 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for lots of race/class interaction and No. 4 for quality of life by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance.

Interview with James Tour

Graphene research and commercialisation: The James Tour interview

Professor James Tour is the leading graphene researcher in the USA. His team has made some exciting discoveries in recent years. He set some time aside to chat with us. This is where the future begins, read on to find out more from our conversation.

James and his team have been working on so many things it is easy to become lost in the successes his team has created. We decided to start with the chemistry and approach the body of graphene work from the point of view of the three main categories of new materials he has been working on. Graphene Quantum Dots, Laser-Induced Graphene and Graphene Nanoribbons.

Graphene Quantum Dots (GQDs)

Quantum dots are nanoscale materials that absorb ultraviolet light and then fluoresce in the visible part of the spectrum with many colours that are dependent on the size of the material. They have a wide range of applications from security to medical imaging. Quantum dots have been made from heavy metals such as lead and cadmium and these heavy metals are toxic and so increasingly undesirable.

Graphene quantum dots have a similar response to traditional inorganic quantum dots with the added benefits of being non-toxic. GQD were originally made in 2010 by cutting graphene nanoplates derived from graphite [1]. James mentioned that these GQDs were very expensive, costing over $1M per kg.

How are graphene quantum dots made?

Image: Shutterstock

The big advance James and his team made in 2013 was to create graphene quantum dots from coal [2]. This created the foundations for an industrial process because coal is an abundant and cheap natural material and the process for making the GQDs is based on straightforward chemistry. The graphene quantum dots made by this method are also water dispersible. This has brought the price of graphene quantum dots down to hundreds of dollars per tonne. This work has been licenced to an Australian start-up company, Dotz Nano Ltd, although the industrial process has been modified and optimized.

What can graphene quantum dots be used for?

Now that graphene quantum dots can be made cost effectively, a range of potential uses has opened up. Graphene quantum dots can be made in a range of precise sizes by separating the products using techniques such as cross flow ultrafiltration. Because graphene quantum dots can be made in a range of sizes the colours they emit can also be controlled precisely. The amount of GQD determines the intensity of the light emitted at a particular wavelength. This means unique ‘barcode’ identifiers can be created by combining different amounts of different types of GQD.

Anti-Counterfeiting: High-end luxury goods such as ladies’ handbags are being marked discreetly with graphene quantum dot identifiers that can only be read with specially designed equipment.

Agriculture: In North America some states have legalised cannabis production and use. How to tell legally grown cannabis from the illegal? It turns out that graphene quantum dots can be added to the irrigation water used for growing the plants. The GQDs are taken up by each plant and incorporated in its structure. This means the leaves and stems contain the unique barcode; it not only validates the product as legal but also identifies the source.

Energy: The USA has reduced its dependence Middle Eastern oil imports with the development of hydraulic fracturing (Fracking) [3]. Fracking requires large amounts of water and there is controversy that fracking water has contaminated public water supplies. Graphene Quantum Dots are being added to the water used in fracking and these can prove whether contamination has occurred and also pinpoint the well source.

Laser-Induced Graphene (LIG)

In 2014 James Tour’s team published research that showed graphene could be created by burning carbon containing materials with a laser [4]. This Laser-Induced Graphene (LIG) has become a field of research in its own right in the past five years.

How is laser induced graphene made?

LIG is made by shining an infrared laser on a surface that contains carbon. The energy in the light converts the sp3-carbon atoms to sp2-carbon (graphene) atoms by pulsed laser irradiation. The resulting LIG exhibits high electrical conductivity.

The creation of LIG can be finessed further. Making LIG in air or oxygen makes graphene that is superhydrophilic (water loving, oil repellent), and making LIG in argon or hydrogen makes graphene that is superhydrophobic (oil loving, water repellent) [5]. This has strong implications for membranes as we will see.

Professor James Tour with laser induced graphene on various materials including wood, cotton, cardboard, bread, potato and a coconut. Image source: YouTube

What can laser induced graphene be used for?

Antifouling membranes: Porous membranes coated with LIG prevent biofilms from forming on their surface which means they are inherently antifouling. Furthermore, pass a current between two LIG coated surfaces and they generate hydroxyl radicals that actively kill bacteria and fungi in water.

Electronics: 5G antenna have been made on polyimide and James’ team is developing a roll to roll process for manufacturing these.

LIG strain sensors have also been made and these can detect strains over a very wide range and from very small to large forces with one thousand times the sensitivity of comparable sensors.

These are just some examples of the uses that have been found for LIG. James’ team is finding new uses all the time as this is an active area of research. The field has grown to the point where 1-2 articles per week are appearing in the science and engineering literature on LIG-based devices.

Graphene Nanoribbons (GNRs)

In 2009 James Tour’s team discovered a method to create graphene nanoribbons (GNRs) [6]. They started with carbon nanotubes and chemically unzipped them longitudinally using concentrated sulphuric acid and potassium permanganate. This created graphene oxide nanoribbons so by adding reducing agents or just heating them to 200°C, they were able to reduce these creating long thin ribbon like strips of graphene. Or they can reductively split the carbon nanotubes so that the GNRs form directly with no need for a subsequent reduction step.

Over the past decade James’ laboratory has learned how to add functional groups to the edges of the graphene nanoribbons to improve their performance for different applications, some of their findings are truly astounding

What can functionalised graphene nanoribbons be used for?

Aerospace: GNR coatings heat up when conducting a current and have been used to make spray on de-icing coatings on radar domes for aircraft helicopter rotor blades. The GNR coating can be overpainted with commercially available varnishes to improve its wear resistance without affecting the de-icing performance

Food and drink packaging: Transparent plastic bottles used for fizzy drinks are made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET), however, the carbon dioxide leaches through pores in the plastic and the drinks become flat with time. The packaging industry has learned to add up to 28% nanoclays to reduce the porosity. This helps prevent carbon dioxide loss but not the ingress of oxygen which spoils the contents making them taste bad. The team in the Tour lab has found that adding just 0.5% graphene nanoribbons to the PET plastic reduces the ingress of gasses by over one thousand times. This will improve the shelf life of foods and drinks in PET packaging and reduce waste.

Healing spinal injuries: This is the most amazing aspect of James’ work. The team functionalised graphene nanoribbons with polyethylene glycol (PEG) at the edges to create PEG-GNRs with improved biocompatibility. The team found that nerve cells would grow and reconnect along PEG-GNRs. So, they conducted an experiment where a rat had a spinal cord surgically cut completely in two and that paralysed it from the neck down. Then they introduced the PEG-GNRs into the injured region. They found that the nerve cells started to regrow within 24 hours and the rat was able to walk perfectly again within two weeks. This work is being continued by a spin off company based in Israel called NeuroCords Ltd. to help people that have suffered spinal cord injuries. A video of the restored rat can be seen below:

I found the interview with Professor James Tour fascinating and enlightening. Over the past decade his laboratory has demonstrated a consistent ability to drive innovative products from the rapidly evolving field that is graphene. His work is truly astounding and still continues. If I were a panel member for the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences James Tour would get my vote for a Nobel Prize without hesitation, his work is that impressive.

James Tour was Interviewed by Adrian Nixon Editor of the Nixene Journal

1. D. Pan, J. Zhang, Z. Li, M. Wu, (2010). Hydrothermal Route for Cutting Graphene Sheets into Blue‐Luminescent Graphene Quantum Dots, Adv. Mater., 22, 734

2. Ye. R, Xiang. C, Lin. J, Peng. Z, Huang. K, Yan. Z, Cook, N, Samuel. E, Hwang. C, Ruan. G, Ceriotti. G, Raji1. A, Martı. A, Tour. J, (2013). Coal as an abundant source of graphene quantum dots. Nature Communications 4(1)

3. Lack. S, (2018) America’s Path To Energy Independence: The Shale Revolution. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/simonlack/2018/06/04/americas-path-to-energy-independence-the-shale-revolution/#6a05d76a7554 [Accessed 20 Jun 2019]

4. Lin. J, Peng. Z, Liu. Y, Ruiz-Zepeda. F, Ruquan. Y, Samuel. E, Yacaman. M, Yakobson. B, Tour. J, (2014). Laser-induced porous graphene films from commercial polymers. Nature Communications

5. Li. Y, Luong. D, Zhang. J, Tarkunde. Y, Kittrell. C, Sargunaraj. F, Ji. Y, Arnusch. C, Tour. J, (2017). Laser-Induced Graphene in Controlled Atmospheres: From Superhydrophilic to Superhydrophobic Surfaces. Advanced Materials 29(27)

6. Kosynkin, D. V., Higginbotham, A. L., Sinitskii, A., Lomeda, J. R., Dimiev, A., Price, B. K., & Tour, J. M. (2009). Longitudinal unzipping of carbon nanotubes to form graphene nanoribbons. Nature, 458(7240), 872–876.

7. Kim C, Sikkema WKA, Hwang I, Oh H, Kim UJ, Lee BH, Tour JM. (2016). Spinal cord fusion with PEG-GNRs (TexasPEG): Neurophysiological recovery in 24 hours in rats. Surg Neurol Int

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Graphene gets enhanced by flashing

Process customizes one-, two- or three-element doping for applications.

Flashing graphene into existence from waste was merely a good start. Now Rice University researchers are customizing it.

The Rice lab of chemist James Tour has modified its flash Joule heating process to produce doped graphene that tailors the atom-thick material's structures and electronic states to make them more suitable for optical and electronic nanodevices. The doping process adds other elements to graphene's 2D carbon matrix.

The process reported in the American Chemical Society journal ACS Nano shows how graphene can be doped with a single element or with pairs or trios of elements. The process was demonstrated with single elements boron, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur, a two-element combination of boron and nitrogen, and a three-element mix of boron, nitrogen and sulfur.

The process takes about one second, is both catalyst- and solvent-free, and is entirely dependent on "flashing" a powder that combines the dopant elements with carbon black.

Doping graphene is possible through bottom-up approaches like chemical vapor deposition or synthetic organic processes, but these usually yield products in trace amounts or produce defects in the graphene. The Rice process is a promising route to produce large quantities of "heteroatom-doped" graphene quickly and without solvents, catalysts or water.

"This opens up a new realm of possibilities for flash graphene," Tour said. "Once we learned to make the original product, we knew the ability to directly synthesize doped turbostratic graphene would lead to many more options for useful products. These new atoms added to the graphene matrix will permit stronger composites to be made since the new atoms will bind better to the host material, such as concrete, asphalt or plastic. The added atoms will also modify the electronic properties, making them better-suited for specific electronic and optical devices."

Graphene is turbostratic when stacks of the 2D honeycomblike lattices don't align with one another. This makes it easier to disperse the nanoscale sheets in a solution, producing soluble graphene that is much simpler to incorporate into other materials, Tour said.

The lab tested various doped graphenes in two scenarios: electrochemical oxygen reduction reactions (ORR) that are key to catalytic devices like fuel cells, and as part of an electrode in lithium metal batteries that represent the next generation of rechargeable batteries with high energy densities.

Sulfur-doped graphene proved best for ORR, while nitrogen-doped graphene proved able to reduce nucleation overpotential during the electrodeposition of metallic lithium. That should facilitate more uniform deposition and improved stability in next-generation rechargeable metal batteries, the lab reported.

Rice graduate students Weiyin Chen and Chang Ge are co-lead authors of the paper. Co-authors are alumnus John Tianci Li, graduate students Jacob Beckham, Kevin Wyss, Paul Advincula, Lucas Eddy and Jinhang Chen, undergraduate Robert Carter, postdoctoral researcher Zhe Yuan, research scientist Carter Kittrell and alumnus Duy Xuan Luong.

The research was supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (FA9550-19-1-0296), the Department of Energy-National Energy Technology Laboratory (DE-FE0031794) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Engineer Research and Development Center (W912HZ-21-2-0050).

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Story Source:

Materials provided by Rice University . Original written by Mike Williams. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

Journal Reference :

• Weiyin Chen, Chang Ge, John Tianci Li, Jacob L. Beckham, Zhe Yuan, Kevin M. Wyss, Paul A. Advincula, Lucas Eddy, Carter Kittrell, Jinhang Chen, Duy Xuan Luong, Robert A. Carter, James M. Tour. Heteroatom-Doped Flash Graphene . ACS Nano , 2022; DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.2c01136

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Tires turned into graphene that makes stronger concrete

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How to Turn Garbage Into Graphene

All you need is a zap of electricity.

• The team is able to produce kilograms of graphene daily. Earlier methods for producing the material turned up mere picograms.
• On Monday, their results were published in the scientific journal Nature.

Carbon may be the building block of life, but it's also a building block inside a whole bunch of our trash, from the carbon black in tires to banana peels and plastic bags. But for the first time, scientists have found a way to give this underutilized carbon new life.

With a simple jolt of electricity, researchers at Rice University have turned garbage into graphene, a vital material in electronics, solar panels, and even asphalt. The new process, which is called "flash graphene" production, yields bulk quantities of graphene flakes. Not only does this technique produce far more graphene than traditional methods, but it's also way cheaper and greener, upcycling food waste, plastic, and even coal into a valuable carbon allotrope used in various branches of material science.

"This is a big deal," James Tour, the Rice University chemist who came up with the process, says in a press statement. "The world throws out 30 percent to 40 percent of all food, because it goes bad, and plastic waste is of worldwide concern. We’ve already proven that any solid carbon-based matter, including mixed plastic waste and rubber tires, can be turned into graphene."

More From Popular Mechanics

In a video from Rice, Tour guides viewers through the flash graphene process. First, simple wall outlets power up bays of capacitors at the bottom of a plastic bin. The current produced then travels through electronic components until it reaches two electrodes on the other side. The voltage of the current is high enough that it's sent through the garbage "with enough energy to break every carbon-carbon bond in the system," Tour explains. The carbon is heated to about 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

When the carbon bonds break, new bonds are constructed to create graphene, which is essentially made up of thin sheets of carbon atoms. In the example shown in the video above, the researchers use carbon black—a material created through the incomplete combustion of petroleum and used as a black pigment in newspaper ink or as a conductive agent in electronics.

The flash graphene process gets its name from the spark of bright light created when the chemical reaction occurs. Most of the energy is not turning into heat, but instead goes into what's called black-body radiation , a type of thermal electromagnetic radiation. That radiation breaks every carbon-carbon bond and any excess energy leftover is released in the form of the bright flash of light. Flash graphene is made in just 10 milliseconds this way.

Tour says that method is far more efficient than previous methods of producing graphene . In a video from The Science Channel, there's a complex process outlined that includes using a vacuum to evaporate gold, baking a silicon chip in a plasma etcher, and dissolving gold in a chemical solution. And that's not even half of the process. Tour says these methods produce only small quantities of graphene.

"Previously, we had taken a copper foil and we could grow graphene on that from many different carbon sources. One of them, for example, being cookies, Girl Scout Cookies, or from dead roaches," says Tour. "But the problem with that is we could only make about a picogram of graphene, a very, very small amount of graphene that might be suitable for electronics. Here, we can do it in bulk."

A picogram, mind you, is only one trillionth of a milligram. Now, the Rice team is scaling up to daily production levels in the kilograms.

In the future, Tour says, there are endless uses for his new flash graphene process. It could even save the dying coal industry, he posits. By continuing to mine coal—but using it as a raw material in graphene creation, rather than simply burning it for energy—the industry can stay alive and convert its product into a higher value material.

Graphene sells at about $100 to $200 per gram , while coal averages closer to $100 per ton, according to Tour. And instead of putting out noxious greenhouse gases, miners could turn over coal that can be put into paints, concrete, film, or even asphalt.

"It's just enormous what we're going to be able to do with this," Tour says.

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From Trash To Flash GRAPHENE [2020]

An educational flash graphene video, produced by James M. Tour at Rice University, can be viewed at the following link. Animated Educational Flash Graphene Video

Nanomachines

“Nanotechnology, Life’s Origin and Evolution: Facts vs. Conjecture” Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy Colloquium, McGovern Medical School (University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, December 13, 2018)

“ The Mystery of The Origin of Life ” – Dr. James Tour (Ratio Christi Campus Apologetics at The Ohio State University, October 28, 2019)

“Origin of Life, Evolution, So-Called Scientific Facts and Christian Apologetics” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=il3z5SuqWgU&t=2s

“My Coming to Faith” http://youtu.be/QNGLZvtRoiU

Dr. Tour’s interview with Eric Metaxas Monday, March 26, 2018 Tuesday, April 3, 2018 Thursday, April 12, 2018

“Veracity of the Scriptures on the Resurrection of Jesus Christ” (Rice University, March 29, 2018) https://youtu.be/gm4DWnD72TE

“Jesus, Evolution and Origin of Life” Syracuse University, April 5, 2018

“Molecular electronics for reading the entire human genome in 1 hour for $100” https://www.youtube.com/embed/INKPbnlEMtc

Graphene grown on food, clothing, paper and wood (Rice University, February 12, 2018) https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3&v=oaaHLu77pQc

Does Science Make Faith Obsolete? (Biola University, September 29, 2016) http://open.biola.edu/resources/does-science-make-faith-obsolete

Propelling Your Career (The Pascal Lectures on Christianity, University of Waterloo) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgTygiRP5IQ

The Nanotechnologist & God (The Pascal Lectures on Christianity, University of Waterloo) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cymgCKKgzjU

Origin of Life. An Insider Story https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zQXgJ-dXM4

Does Science make Faith Obsolete? (Veritas Forum – Tulane U. October 19, 2015) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yx4triMBAg

Jesus Christ & Nanotechnology https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0uq727Fjbw

Does Science make Faith Obsolete? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CB3ZmLatcUI

Coal Yields Quantum Dots http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=X6rHW7RxcZQ

Science and Faith of James Tour, 2013 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pR4QhNFTtyw

Nanotech and Jesus Christ, James Tour, 2012 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZrxTH-UUdI

Emerging Trends in Organic Chemistry, James Tour, 2011 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqz91pTLZSE

General Nanotechnology: http://youtu.be/IibY5H8p2jg

Graphene: http://youtu.be/d-P6_BMsHSw http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loLvULmacw4 Voice of America Interview http://www.voanews.com/media/video/1774950.html

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Physics Colloquium: Experiments with Graphene for the Advanced Undergraduate Laboratory

Randolph Peterson, the Tom Costen Professor of Physics and chair of the Physics and Astronomy Department at Sewanee: The University of the South, will be visiting campus to introduce students to new and exciting experiments using graphene.

Graphene, one-atom-thick graphite, was discovered and identified in 2004 by Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov. For this work, they were awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics. Over 30,000 journal articles on graphene have been published since its discovery. We have the opportunity to introduce our students to some of the basic physical properties of graphene in our advanced lab courses while it is still an exciting material, both scientifically and commercially. I will give an overview of some of the experiments that can be introduced into the undergraduate curriculum and the results that you can expect.

Join us on Friday, Nov. 10, for this exciting presentation from Peterson. Lunch will be available in Hayes 216 from 11:45 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. and the presentation will begin in Hayes 211/213 at 12:10 p.m. We hope to see you there!

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• Russian Kitchen

Where is the birthplace of Russian rock'n'roll?

Neuromonakh Feofan.

In the center of Yekaterinburg, on Clara Zetkin Street, behind an inconspicuous iron door, is a city legend - Marshal Georgy Zhukov's bunker. Usually, old bomb shelters are turned into museums but this one has become a recording studio. Its director is a figure no less legendary in the Urals: Aleksandr Pantykin, the "grandfather of Sverdlovsk rock music," as he is respectfully known here .

Aleksandr Pantykin.

At 25 meters below ground, there’s nothing to distract one from the creative process and the neighbors are not disturbed by the sound of musical instruments. "When we had our studio in a city flat, people complained to the police about us all the time because the noise was incredible," says Pantykin. "So we started putting a lot of effort into looking for replacement premises and in the end, 10 years ago, found this bunker. "

Zhukov's bunker in the center of Yekaterinburg. Did you notice 'piano keys' on the wall?

" In the bunker, you can survive anything, even a nuclear explosion. All will die but Urals rock music will live on," the musician jokes (or not). 

The rock musicians use the bunker for free. Inside they’ve set up a rehearsal room, a recording and video-editing studio, and an office which has awards for various cultural achievements decorating its walls. Among them are a Nika [main Russian national film award] and a Golden Mask [Russian national theater award] (the composer received them for his music for theater productions), as well as awards for his contribution to rock music, which, in the case of the "grandfather," is weighty indeed .

A rehearsal room in the very bottom of the bunker.

In the 1980s Pantykin was the leader of Urfin Dzhjus, a cult rock band, which in fact marked the beginning of the history of the rock movement in the Urals. 

From ideology to show business  

In the Soviet period, the industrial city of Yekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk at the time) was one of the capitals of rock music, alongside Moscow and St. Petersburg (Leningrad at the time). Bands such as Nautilus Pompilius, Chaif , and Smyslovye Gallyutsinatsii were born here. All of them belonged to the local rock club, whose members were allowed to use the House of Culture premises for rehearsals and were helped with outfits and stage design for performances, and even with recording their albums. As Pantykin recalls, Urfin Dzhjus received 5,000 rubles for an album - it was a colossal amount of money at the time, comparable with the cost of a Volga car. Generally speaking, rock clubs were set up in order to stop illegal music activity .

Nautilus Pompilius, the beginning.

In the USSR during the 1970s and1980s, under the influence of Western music, numerous semi-underground rock bands had emerged which gave "house concerts" in friends' flats. Then the party bosses decided: If we can't suppress the movement, we should take charge of it. And official rock clubs were set up: the Leningrad Rock Club, which included bands such as Zoopark, Secret, and Kino ; the Moscow Rock Laboratory, with groups such as Mashina Vremeni , Bravo, and Brigada S; the Sverdlovsk Rock Club, and others. 

And here’s the paradox: when rock music became official, Boris Grebenshchikov from Aquarium wrote his famous song “Rock-n-Roll is Dead ” about the genre having exhausted itself. Incidentally, this song is also known in its English translation by Joanna Stingray , a big admirer of Soviet rock music who was then married to Yuri Kasparyan, the Kino guitarist. It is thanks to her that in 1986 the “Red Wave” album recorded by Soviet musicians came out in the U.S. and the names of Viktor Tsoi and Boris Grebenshchikov became known to foreign audiences. However, soon the Soviet Union collapsed and, from being protest music, rock music turned into show business. Nevertheless, many performers of the time are still popular today, even among young people. 

Alain Delon and the mystique of Urals rock music

"By and large, I have always loved and preferred the Sverdlovsk Rock Club: if in Moscow it was jolly rock-n-roll and in St. Petersburg hopelessness and melancholy, Urals music had its own mystique that couldn't help but seem attractive," says Muscovite Daria Sokolova, who went to the Sverdlovsk Region to see the birthplace of her favorite rock band, Agatha Christie, and visit the rock music museum. "Take, for instance, Nautilus with their song which has the line "Alain Delon doesn't drink eau-de-cologne." Well, where is Alain Delon and where is Yekaterinburg? "

" It’s true, the Urals do have a special atmosphere," says Pantykin. "The region is the birthplace of many people who have had a strong influence on the course of Russian history: Marshal Georgy Zhukov, President Boris Yeltsin, film director Alexei Balabanov . And, of course, many talented young musicians live here, although the music they perform is more amateur than professional, showing a lack of proper training." 

The "grandfather" of Urals rock music recalls that in the past the state supported young people who wanted to play music, but adds that nowadays it is much more difficult for them to get through to the professional stage. But it is not for nothing that Yekaterinburg is regarded as Russia's music capital: it is here that one of the country's most famous rock festivals takes place every year in which all young musicians aspire to take part. 

Round dances with an ax  

Every year on Jan.13, when Russia celebrates the New Year according to the Julian calendar, musician Yevgeny Gorenburg stages the Old New Rock festival. Out of hundreds of musicians, only a few dozen are picked: The selection is done by an expert council consisting of the titans of Sverdlovsk rock music including Vladimir Shakhrin and Vladimir Begunov (from Chaif ), Aleksey Khomenko (Nautilus Pompilius), and Aleksandr Pantykin. 

Yevgeny Gorenburg opens the Old New Rock festival, Jan. 13, 2019.

For the last few years the festival has been held at the Yeltsin Center , a museum dedicated to the disintegration of the USSR and the first years of the new Russia. There one can see empty store shelves - a symbol of shopping (or its absence) in the 1990s - and be photographed against the background of Erik Bulatov's enormous painting inscribed "Freedom." Arguably it is the spirit of this freedom that has become the main attraction for musicians from different regions of Russia and other countries who come to Yekaterinburg. Are the new rock musicians different from their predecessors? Of course, they are .

Empty store shelves as the part of the exhibition at the Yeltsin Center.

Take the band Neuromonakh Feofan from St. Petersburg: instead of smashing guitars against the stage, they invite their audience to "stamp along" to the accompaniment of Russian folk drum 'n' bass. And the rousing ValieDollz foursome from Perm delivers the sort of brasscore sound that heavy metal bands can only dream of.

Avant-garde Leontiev band (called after the prominent Russian actor).

Or take the band called Avant-garde Leontiev from Yekaterinburg, which turns every performance into a theatrical production.

Neuromonakh Feofan and his band.

Lovers of the classic genre will say that it’s no longer rock music. But spectators like it: they come to Yekaterinburg and join in folk-style khorovod round dancing with axes (not real ones) to the music of Feofan , and slam dance to Leontiev, while other rock musicians are rehearsing underground in the bunker on Clara Zetkin Street where they plan to survive the apocalypse...if it ever comes.

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Marshall Day working with Zaha Hadid Architects to design Sverdlovsk Philharmonic Concert Hall

We are pleased to announce that Marshall Day Acoustics is a core member of the team, led by Zaha Hadid Architects, that has won first prize in a major design competition for a new performance venue for the Ural Philharmonic Orchestra in Yekaterinburg, Russia.

The winning entry was selected from 47 proposals submitted to the Ministry of Construction and Infrastructure Development of the Sverdlovsk Region.

The design creates a performance hub with a new 1,600-seat concert hall and 400-seat chamber music hall, while also incorporating an existing 700 seat venue.

The Concert Hall

The new concert hall forms the heart of the building with a flowing vineyard style seating layout. There is seating for a choir of 100 and a large organ to support orchestral performances. Balcony overhangs have been minimised to allow access from all seats to the rich blended sound created in the ample room volume. Marshall Day worked with Zaha Hadid Architects to shape all the internal surfaces of the hall to guide the sound.  The early lateral reflections generate the clarity and envelopment that will provide this Hall with world class acoustic support for performers and audiences.

“For musicians, this new hall is crucial.  It will be a musical instrument that brings the sound to life.” – Dmitry Liss, Artistic Director and Principal Conductor od the Ural Philharmonic Orchestra, and member of the design competition jury.

The Chamber Music Hall

The chamber music hall creates an intimate space and features a large transparent glass facade behind the stage to link the room to the Weiner Gardens beyond.

The performance venues are connected through a generous foyer and shared access to preparation and dressing rooms. A striking feature of the design is the flowing roof architecture, which unifies the building.

"Echoing the physical aspects of sound waves, the design of the new philharmonic concert hall is based on the properties of musical sound resonance creating wave vibrations in a continuous smooth surface," - Zaha Hadid Architects .

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RMLA's 2018 Outstanding Person Award goes to Chris Day

Thursday, September 27, 2018

At New Zealand's Resource Management Law Association conference dinner on Saturday 22nd Sep 2018, our intrepid co-founder Chris Day was awarded the Outstanding Person Award. The nomination and award was kept secret from Chris, and since he was sailing around the Mediterranean at the time, its presentation over Skype was completely unexpected.

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T. T. and W. F. Chao Professor of Chemistry Professor of Materials Science & NanoEngineering

Department of Chemistry

255 Dell Butcher Hall | 713-348-6246 | [email protected]

WEBSITE(S) | Tour Group Rice | Google Scholar Citations

Research Summary

Tour’s scientific research areas include nanoelectronics, graphene electronics, silicon oxide electronics, carbon nanovectors for medical applications, green carbon research for enhanced oil recovery and environmentally friendly oil and gas extraction, graphene photovoltaics, carbon supercapacitors, lithium ion batteries, lithium metal batteries, CO2 capture, water splitting to H2 and O2, water purification, carbon nanotube and graphene synthetic modifications, graphene oxide, carbon composites, hydrogen storage on nanoengineered carbon scaffolds, and synthesis of single-molecule nanomachines which includes molecular motors and nanocars and nanomachines that can drill through cell membranes. He has also developed strategies for retarding chemical terrorist attacks. For pre-college education, Tour developed the NanoKids concept for K-12 education in nanoscale science, and also Dance Dance Revolution and Guitar Hero science packages for elementary and middle school education: SciRave ( www.scirave.org ) which later expanded to a Stemscopes-based SciRave. The SciRave program has risen to be the #1 most widely adopted program in Texas to complement science instruction, and it is currently used by over 450 school districts and 40,000 teachers with over 1 million student downloads.

James M. Tour, a synthetic organic chemist, received his Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from Syracuse University, his Ph.D. in synthetic organic and organometallic chemistry from Purdue University, and postdoctoral training in synthetic organic chemistry at the University of Wisconsin and Stanford University. After spending 11 years on the faculty of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of South Carolina, he joined the Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology at Rice University in 1999 where he is presently the T. T. and W. F. Chao Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Computer Science, and Professor of Materials Science and NanoEngineering. Tour has about 650 research publications and over 200 patents, with an H-index = 129 and i10 index = 538 with total citations over 77,000 (Google Scholar). He was inducted into the National Academy of Inventors in 2015. Tour was named among “The 50 Most Influential Scientists in the World Today” by TheBestSchools.org in 2014; listed in “The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds” by Thomson Reuters ScienceWatch.com in 2014; recipient of the Trotter Prize in “Information, Complexity and Inference” in 2014; and was the Lady Davis Visiting Professor, Hebrew University, June, 2014. Tour was named “Scientist of the Year” by R&D Magazine, 2013. He was awarded the George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching, 2012, Rice University; won the ACS Nano Lectureship Award from the American Chemical Society, 2012; was the Lady Davis Visiting Professor, Hebrew University, June, 2011; and was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 2009. Tour was ranked one of the Top 10 chemists in the world over the past decade, by a Thomson Reuters citations per publication index survey, 2009; won the Distinguished Alumni Award, Purdue University, 2009; and the Houston Technology Center’s Nanotechnology Award in 2009. He won the Feynman Prize in Experimental Nanotechnology in 2008, the NASA Space Act Award in 2008 for his development of carbon nanotube reinforced elastomers, and the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award from the American Chemical Society for his achievements in organic chemistry in 2007. Tour was the recipient of the George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching in 2007. He also won the Small Times magazine’s Innovator of the Year Award in 2006, the Nanotech Briefs Nano 50 Innovator Award in 2006, the Alan Berman Research Publication Award, Department of the Navy in 2006, the Southern Chemist of the Year Award from the American Chemical Society in 2005, and The Honda Innovation Award for Nanocars in 2005. Tour’s paper on Nanocars was the most highly accessed journal article of all American Chemical Society articles in 2005, and it was listed by LiveScience as the second most influential paper in all of science in 2005. Tour has won several other national awards including the National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator Award in Polymer Chemistry and the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award in Polymer Chemistry.

Research Areas

Organic Synthesis; Chemical Biology; Spectroscopy & Imaging; Nanomaterial Synthesis

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• News Releases

Rice lab turns trash into valuable graphene in a flash

'Green' process promises pristine graphene in bulk using waste food, plastic and other materials

Rice University

image: Carbon black powder turns into graphene in a burst of light and heat through a technique developed at Rice University. Flash graphene turns any carbon source into the valuable 2D material in 10 milliseconds. view more 

Credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University

HOUSTON - (Jan. 27, 2020) - That banana peel, turned into graphene, can help facilitate a massive reduction of the environmental impact of concrete and other building materials. While you're at it, toss in those plastic empties.

A new process introduced by the Rice University lab of chemist James Tour can turn bulk quantities of just about any carbon source into valuable graphene flakes. The process is quick and cheap; Tour said the "flash graphene" technique can convert a ton of coal, food waste or plastic into graphene for a fraction of the cost used by other bulk graphene-producing methods.

"This is a big deal," Tour said. "The world throws out 30% to 40% of all food, because it goes bad, and plastic waste is of worldwide concern. We've already proven that any solid carbon-based matter, including mixed plastic waste and rubber tires, can be turned into graphene."

As reported in Nature, flash graphene is made in 10 milliseconds by heating carbon-containing materials to 3,000 Kelvin (about 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit). The source material can be nearly anything with carbon content. Food waste, plastic waste, petroleum coke, coal, wood clippings and biochar are prime candidates, Tour said. "With the present commercial price of graphene being $67,000 to $200,000 per ton, the prospects for this process look superb," he said.

Tour said a concentration of as little as 0.1% of flash graphene in the cement used to bind concrete could lessen its massive environmental impact by a third. Production of cement reportedly emits as much as 8% of human-made carbon dioxide every year.

"By strengthening concrete with graphene, we could use less concrete for building, and it would cost less to manufacture and less to transport," he said. "Essentially, we're trapping greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane that waste food would have emitted in landfills. We are converting those carbons into graphene and adding that graphene to concrete, thereby lowering the amount of carbon dioxide generated in concrete manufacture. It's a win-win environmental scenario using graphene."

"Turning trash to treasure is key to the circular economy," said co-corresponding author Rouzbeh Shahsavari, an adjunct assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering and of materials science and nanoengineering at Rice and president of C-Crete Technologies. "Here, graphene acts both as a 2D template and a reinforcing agent that controls cement hydration and subsequent strength development."

"With our method, that carbon becomes fixed," he said. "It will not enter the air again."

The process aligns nicely with Rice's recently announced Carbon Hub initiative to create a zero-emissions future that repurposes hydrocarbons from oil and gas to generate hydrogen gas and solid carbon with zero emission of carbon dioxide. The flash graphene process can convert that solid carbon into graphene for concrete, asphalt, buildings, cars, clothing and more, Tour said.

Flash Joule heating for bulk graphene, developed in the Tour lab by Rice graduate student and lead author Duy Luong, improves upon techniques like exfoliation from graphite and chemical vapor deposition on a metal foil that require much more effort and cost to produce just a little graphene.

"That's important, because now we can get each of these single-atomic layers to interact with a host composite," he said.

The lab noted that used coffee grounds transformed into pristine single-layer sheets of graphene.

The flash process happens in a custom-designed reactor that heats material quickly and emits all noncarbon elements as gas. "When this process is industrialized, elements like oxygen and nitrogen that exit the flash reactor can all be trapped as small molecules because they have value," Tour said.

He said the flash process produces very little excess heat, channeling almost all of its energy into the target. "You can put your finger right on the container a few seconds afterwards," Tour said. "And keep in mind this is almost three times hotter than the chemical vapor deposition furnaces we formerly used to make graphene, but in the flash process the heat is concentrated in the carbon material and none in a surrounding reactor.

"All the excess energy comes out as light, in a very bright flash, and because there aren't any solvents, it's a super clean process," he said.

Luong did not expect to find graphene when he fired up the first small-scale device to find new phases of material, beginning with a sample of carbon black. "This started when I took a look at a Science paper talking about flash Joule heating to make phase-changing nanoparticles of metals," he said. But Luong quickly realized the process produced nothing but high-quality graphene.

Atom-level simulations by Rice researcher and co-author Ksenia Bets confirmed that temperature is key to the material's rapid formation. "We essentially speed up the slow geological process by which carbon evolves into its ground state, graphite," she said. "Greatly accelerated by a heat spike, it is also stopped at the right instant, at the graphene stage.

"It is amazing how state-of-the-art computer simulations, notoriously slow for observing such kinetics, reveal the details of high temperature-modulated atomic movements and transformation," Bets said.

Tour hopes to produce a kilogram (2.2 pounds) a day of flash graphene within two years, starting with a project recently funded by the Department of Energy to convert U.S.-sourced coal. "This could provide an outlet for coal in large scale by converting it inexpensively into a much-higher-value building material," he said.

Tour has a grant from the Department of Energy to scale up the flash graphene process, which will be co-funded by the start-up company, Universal Matter Ltd.

Co-authors of the paper include Rice graduate students Wala Ali Algozeeb, Weiyin Chen, Paul Advincula, Emily McHugh, Muqing Ren and Zhe Wang; postdoctoral researcher Michael Stanford; academic visitors Rodrigo Salvatierra and Vladimir Mancevski; Mahesh Bhatt of C-Crete Technologies, Stafford, Texas; and Rice assistant research professor Hua Guo. Boris Yakobson, the Karl F. Hasselmann Chair of Engineering and a professor of materials science and nanoengineering and of chemistry, is co-corresponding author.

Tour is the T.T. and W.F. Chao Chair in Chemistry as well as a professor of computer science and of materials science and nanoengineering at Rice.

The Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the National Science Foundation supported the research.

Read the paper at https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-1938-0 .

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-1938-0

This news release can be found online at https://news.rice.edu/2020/01/27/rice-lab-turns-trash-into-valuable-graphene-in-a-flash/

Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews .

Produced by Brandon Martin/Rice University

Credit: Tour Group/Rice University

Related materials:

Wiess School of Natural Sciences: http://natsci.rice.edu

Images for download:

https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2019/10/1111_FLASH-1-WEB.jpg

Graduate student Duy Luong prepares a sample of carbon black for conversion through the flash graphene technique created at Rice University. (Credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)

https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2019/10/1111_FLASH-2-WEB.jpg

Carbon black powder turns into graphene in a burst of light and heat through a technique developed at Rice University. Flash graphene turns any carbon source into the valuable 2D material in 10 milliseconds. (Credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)

https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2019/10/1111_FLASH-3-WEB.jpg

In a flash, carbon black turns into graphene through a technique developed by Rice University scientists. The scalable process promises to quickly turn carbon from any source into bulk graphene. From left: undergraduate intern Christina Crassas, chemist James Tour and graduate students Weiyin Chen and Duy Luong. (Credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)

https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2019/10/1111_FLASH-4-WEB.jpg

Rice University chemist James Tour, left, and graduate student Duy Luong show a sample of pure turbostratic graphene just converted through the flash graphene technique developed in Tour's lab. The researchers said the process can be scaled up to produce industrial-scale quantities of the valuable material from any carbon source. (Credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University)

https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2020/01/1111_FLASH-5-WEB.jpg

Rice University scientists are turning waste into turbostratic graphene via a process they say can be scaled up to produce industrial-scale quantities. (Credit: Rouzbeh Shahsavari/C-Crete Group)

Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation's top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,962 undergraduates and 3,027 graduate students, Rice's undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is just under 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for lots of race/class interaction and No. 4 for quality of life by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by Kiplinger's Per

Jeff Falk 713-348-6775 [email protected]

Mike Williams 713-348-6728 [email protected]

10.1038/s41586-020-1938-0

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