Scalable production of graphene sheets by mechanical delamination

Mono- and multilayer graphene sheets have been successfully produced from commercial graphite powder in a wet grinding process under mild milling conditions. The shear forces in the milling chamber lead to a continuous delamination of ultrathin graphene flakes which are dispersed in a liquid medium. To avoid agglomeration of the exfoliated flakes the anionic surfactant sodium dodecyl sulfate was used. By adjusting the process parameters in a way to overcome the weak interlayer forces between the sheets without breaking them leads to the fabrication of thin flakes with high aspect ratios. The presented scalable process allows a high-yield and low-cost production of free-standing graphene sheets for various applications. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.