A group at Peking University has successfully achieved the direct growth of graphene on the surface of glass by optimising the growth conditions using chemical vapour deposition, which is expected to accelerate the integration of graphene materials with the glass industry and promote the large-scale application of graphene glass. This latest research was recently reported in the prestigious academic journal Nature Materials.
Glass is one of the traditional building materials with low cost and good light transmission, while graphene is a carbon material consisting of a single layer of carbon atoms in a sheet-like structure, which is the thinnest, hardest, best conductive at room temperature and highly flexible nanomaterial known. The combination of graphene and glass to produce a new composite material, graphene glass, will greatly expand the scope of glass applications, triggering a revolutionary shift in the glass industry from high-volume, low-value-added applications to economical, high-value-added applications.
Current graphene glass is usually obtained by liquid phase coating or transfer methods. The graphene films obtained by these methods inevitably suffer from surface interface contamination, which seriously affects the performance of graphene glass. At the same time, the conventional preparation methods are also difficult to meet the needs of large-scale applications due to the complicated operation, high cost and low yield. The development of a new method for the direct growth of graphene on glass substrates is currently an important topic in related research.
According to reports, after long-term research, a research team led by academician Liu Zhongfan from the School of Chemical and Molecular Engineering of Peking University has successfully overcome the challenges of low catalytic cleavage precursor ability on glass surface and weak migration of carbon fragments on the substrate surface by precisely regulating the reaction gas concentration, growth temperature and growth time, and has successfully achieved the controlled growth of high-quality graphene films on high-temperature resistant glass and ordinary glass.
The experiments demonstrated that under the conditions of graphene growth, ordinary glass exists in the molten state with a highly homogeneous and isotropic surface. These properties of molten glass have been exploited to grow graphene discs of uniform size and distribution. The graphene glasses obtained by the direct growth method have excellent properties such as good contact between the glass and graphene interface and no contamination at the interface.
As graphene glass combines the light transmission of glass with the advantages of electrical and thermal conductivity and surface hydrophobicity of graphene, it can be applied to thermochromic windows, anti-fog windows and photocatalysis in the future. Academician Liu Zhongfan expressed his belief that graphene glass will have a very broad application prospect in the future, which is crucial for both the glass industry and graphene materials.
