A magic wand has been developed! A touch, a bolt of electricity, and a bright flash of light turns trash into the greatest of space-age materials: graphene.

Yes, graphene, which presently sells for $67,000 to $200,000 per ton, can be made from trash which people will pay us to take off their hands.

Bulk graphene synthesis is limited by both the multiple steps complicating the formation process and the quality of the produced graphene. Here we develop a flash joule heating process to prepare high quality graphene from any carbon sources. The process is termed “flash graphene” and it has an exciting scaling potential. This could greatly affect the selling price of graphene, lowering it to a price-point so that it could become an additive in large-scale commodity materials such as even asphalt and concrete.

Currently bulk graphene synthesis is mainly from the top-down exfoliation of graphite either physically, chemically or electrochemically, affording AB-stacked (Bernal) graphene nanoplatelets that are tens of nm in thickness. With this flash graphene magic wand approach, we can solve both process and feedstock problems of graphene synthesis.

Link to article.