Scientists cook up material 200 times stronger than steel out of soybean oil

SYDNEY: An everyday cooking oil has been used to make graphene in a lab — a development scientists said could significantly reduce the cost and complexity of making the supersubstance on a commercial scale.

Graphene, which is made of a layer of tightly-packed carbon, is light, 200 times stronger than steel and more conductive than copper, ABC News reported.

With its super qualities, it has the potential to be used in everything from electronics, to solar cells, to medicine.

But it is very difficult and costly to make beyond the lab.

Many production techniques involve the use of intense heat in a vacuum, and expensive ingredients like high-purity metals and explosive compressed gases.

Now a team of Australian scientists has detailed how they turned cheap everyday ingredients into graphene under normal air conditions.

They said the research, published yesterday in the journal ‘ Nature Communications’, may open up a new avenue for the low- cost synthesis of the highly sought-after material.

To produce the graphene, soybean oil is heated in a tube furnace for about 30 minutes where it decomposes into carbon building blocks on a foil made of nickel. It is then rapidly cooled and diffuses on the surface of the foil into a thin rectangle of graphene film, about five centimetres by two centimetres and one nanometre thick (about 80,000 times thinner than a human hair).

Study co- author Dr Zhao Jun Han of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) said the process was faster and more energy- efficient than other methods.

“The other methods require a few hours for pumping a vacuum, growing a film, and cooling it down,” he said.

Dr Zhao said the process could cut the cost of graphene production ten-fold.

“We believe that this process can significantly reduce the cost of producing graphene film,” he said.