Graphene made with kitchen blender | Hacker News Reader

Graphene made with kitchen blender

bbc.co.uk

74 pointsefficientarch19 comments

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Clearly a story that has grabbed some people's imaginations, but not others. No comments (so far) on any of these:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7627892

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7626865

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7624404

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7622657

Found when searching for duplications, this is different, but does have some discussion:

    A Solution For Graphene Production
   (acs.org)

-- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7614559

http://jenslabs.com/2013/03/14/diy-graphene/ Skipped this one I believe :) the method of making graphene using lightscribe

I'm having a hard time understanding why someone shouldn't make this at home.

This sounds like the perfect experiment I could run with the kids to get them excited about material science. It doesn't need to be a perfect layer of graphene, even a sludge would be good to show them, get them brainstorming about how they would separate out the sludge.

Is there a real reason other than difficulty, why someone shouldn't try this at home?

Is there a real reason other than difficulty, why someone shouldn't try this at home?

Aren't most nano-particles suspected of causing cancer? I assume this method would generate fairly small pieces that might make people worry about that.

Also the blender mix would probably (1) make lots of foam and overflow the blender, and (2) stain everything it touches.

That was a concern from the 90's. However you are being exposed to the "nano particles" everyday already. Rubber from car tires decomposes on the highway into particles of the scale that they can be considered "nano particles", for example. When ever you drive on the highway, you're stirring up clouds of them.

While the general nano particle fear is a little extreme, some of the structures (specifically carbon nano-tubes) have a similar shape as Asbestos, which does cause cancer due to it's shape.

CNTs aren't graphine, and I'm not sure that graphine can be easily made into tubes, but it still should give some pause for thought.

Just wanted to second this: I don't think we know enough about how safe these things are. It's very different to have something like graphene packaged up in a computer chip vs. free-floating in the air. I also have no idea if common, off-the-shelf respirators are effective at blocking such small particles.

Also worth bearing in mind is that, I believe, wherever you make one form of carbon you'll probably end up making other forms too, e.g. buckyballs (C60) and carbon nanotubes have both been found in soot. So even if graphene is safe, I have no idea if this process will produce other potentially unsafe things too. A friend is actually working on looking at the effect carbon nanotubes have on lung epithelial cells, so I know there's interest there.

That said, I imagine you'd find all these products in a standard wood fire too, but then I recall reading that smoke from wood fires is as bad or worse for you as cigarette smoke so perhaps that's little comfort...

Note: I am not a doctor and not an expert in this field either.

Eh, do it in your shed, and use an affordable respirator (available at any hardware store). If you have a place where you can make a bit of a mess then the cost of safety gear is low, construction-grade stuff will be adequate for most non-biological use cases. You can get special filters for asbestos, lead, and similar hazardous substances which contractors encounter frequently in old houses.

The main obstacle I see here (based on this report) is uncertainty about how to separate the material after you've blended it and what exactly you can apply it to without adding lots of expensive lab equipment. One candidate that springs to mind is using it for printing circuits, given graphene's high conductivity.

Silver is probably a better material for a conductive glue than graphene. Probably even aluminium is better.

Random chuncks of graphene thrown toguether, touching in random directions aren't a good conductor at all.

May I recommend building a centrifuge? When I was in middle school, Scientific American had a cool article about extracting DNA In the kitchen. It was an abysmal failure, but attempting to build a centrifuge to separate the samples was immensely fun. Coolest, most thrilling project I tried in school (messy, too).

Note: blender wiring can catch fire if they are loaded for extended periods of time (don't underestimate the inertia), but old blenders work fine for at least a few minutes. Lego Technic works great, but only with really solid cross bracing. I recommend building a barricade around it (World Book volumes work nicely).

Edit: I should note that it did work. The rig spun two 10mL test tubes on swing arms at the low(est?) speed setting (which is pretty fast at a 4 inch radius). It seemed to work, but I never did figure out if the scum on top was DNA.

There have been some low-tech centrifuge designs based on salad spinners - I would think you could make an insert to fit into one that could hold test tubes without too much trouble, though I don't know if it would be powerful enough to separate the graphene well. A good experiment...

Probably just the standard mindless disclaimer that people put in front of anything remotely interesting. If you don't want to get your blender dirty, the tape method would be good.

So much FUD in this thread. Nobody actually has cancer from working with nanoparticles. Researchers have been making carbon nanotubes for years and none of them have cancer.

There probably wouldn't be. I doubt they could be much worse than asbestos or cigarette smoke or coal dust, which on a couple minutes' research looks like it would be hard to notice anything until there's been a large group with many years of continuous exposure. (OTOH, being "nano" means they're new and unknown and so increases the scariness factor a bit.)

Heath reasons I'm guessing.

The article didn't mention the sticky tape method of making graphene, but they did put a link to an article about that [1].

Sticky tape (or Scotch tape) can also be used to make X-rays [2]. Now the only question is how to use a blender to make X-rays…

[1] http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-11478645

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/28/science/28xray.html

It can also be used to see through frosted glass.

http://www.wired.com/2011/04/scotch-tape-lets-you-see-throug...

Very cool. I have jars I want to etch for a product. Now I am wondering if I could get frosted jars and just clear labels.

While this looks like progress, and a potential path for graphene production, it still seems a long ways off from commercial viability. Diamonds went through a similar hype. It may be technically possible to make diamond with a torch or even peanut butter, but commercially producing large, clean gemstones (rather than grit/powder) requires much more involved processes. In this case, a blender could probably scale up easier, but it isn't "metre-scale sheets of graphene" already possible with CVD.

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