Graphene abundance

In the future, single layers of graphene could be used as electrodes for solar cells, as the anode electrode material in lithium batteries, or as efficient zero-band-gap semiconductors.

But research into graphene sheets has been restricted due to the difficulty of creating single-layer samples for use in experiments. Now, however, researchers from UCLA's California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) claimed to have developed a method that can produce graphene sheets in large quantities.

Led by Yang Yang, a professor of materials science and engineering at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering, and Richard Kaner, a UCLA professor of chemistry and biochemistry, have developed a means of placing graphite oxide paper in a solution of pure hydrazine, which then reduced the graphite oxide paper into single-layer graphene.

Such methods have been studied by others, but this is claimed to be the first reported instance where hydrazine has been used as the solvent.