An MIT team has developed a process that could be the basis for the production of large sheets of graphene for ultrathin membranes.Graphene is often made by heating up a copper foil and sending a stream of methane and other gases over it, which then grow into sheets of graphene.The new technique also uses copper foil, but it is unwound from a roll and sent into a small furnace through a pairof tubes.In the first tube, the copper foil is heated to the ideal temperature for graphene deposition. In the second, a specified ratio of methane and hydrogen gas is pumped over the copper. "Graphene starts forming in little islands, and then those islands grow together to form a continuous sheet," said Prof John Hart, director of MIT's Laboratory for Manufacturing Productivity. "By the time it's out of the oven, the graphene should be fully covering the foil in one layer."
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