Nobel prize in physics won with sticky tape and graphite.

[Torillian]

highwaystar101 said:

Torillian said:

Interesting story, I'd heard of the substance but not the way it was discoverred.  I would assume that the graphene you produce with sticky tape and graphite isn't useable though since a speaker I saw said that graphene is the most expensive stuff per milligram in the world which would seem silly if you could make useable graphene with graphite and tape. 

Of course though graphene now isn't produced using tape because it would just be impractical like you say, this was just an experiment from 2004 that produced the first single sheet of graphene. The new processes that have been developed since are more expensive and complex, but they would need to be in order to produce a useable sheet.

Anyway, a sheet of graphene is incredibly light substance, I'm sure it does cost a lot per milligram, but a milligram sheet is a fair bit of graphene.

well the speaker I saw had found a solvent that was able to dissolve graphite and produce graphene, but he didn't mention the standard methods.  He just talked alot about how much cheaper his method is but I'm not sure if you can get useable sheets out of it.  This was a year or so ago so I'm probably just not remembering everything correctly.