Carbon materials such as graphene hold great promise for the production of inexpensive, environmentally safe, and highly conductive inks for printed electronics. This is mainly due to the fact that graphene inks are produced from graphite, a widely available and inexpensive resource. However, the production of graphene inks is a challenging task as it is a tedious, energy consuming process, and sometimes dealing with the use of toxic chemicals.

The efficient and scalable method presented in the Advanced Functional Materials paper uses for the first time graphene gels which are prepared by heating of graphene/polymer/solvent mixtures. The resulting graphene ink can be used for printing of highly conductive high definition circuits.

The ink is fully compatible with current printing infrastructure and may already be used in several applications paving the road towards green carbon based-electronics.

Source: Department of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry