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I am a third year undergraduate Physics student, and for my solid state physics course I am asked to give a short (10 minute) qualitative presentation on the current standings of graphene production, about what can be done right now, what is expected to be doable in the near future, what the current problems are that have to be solved, etcetera.

However, I am having quite some trouble in finding suitable sources. It is of course such a hot topic that new papers come out basically every day, and it is hard to find 'objective' sources that don't just talk about how a specific company has found the new, best way to do it. I suppose this is a bit of a non-traditional question to ask, but I was wondering if someone could help me out by pointing me towards some reliable, recent sources. A review article would be optimal, but of course as it is such a swiftly changing field this might be difficult.

What I plan on doing at this point is structuring my presentation along these rough lines

To start with, talk about how the 'first' graphene was made, using the scotch tape. Everyone I will talk to knows this, but it is still nice to see, especially with good pictures. I will then move on to what can already be done: several techniques that exist and that are being implemented as we speak, and what exactly they produce (multilayer graphene instead of monolayer, for example), and what the problems are that 'we' are currently facing in producing good graphene. Then I would like to talk about what is on the horizon, and on what timescales we expect what.

If anyone has any comments on this (improvements or things I should definitely include) I would also be very happy to read them.

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    $\begingroup$ I not very clear what you're asking for. And explaining how you will do the presentation doesn't add anything to the question. $\endgroup$
    – jinawee
    Commented Nov 13, 2013 at 14:19
  • $\begingroup$ Hm alright, I apologize. What I am asking for is basically one of two things. One is if someone can point me towards reliable, undergratuate-understandable (very vague, I apologize) sources that go into this topic of large scale graphene production. The other is if anyone could suggest how to more efficiently look for these, instead of doing the work for me. I am struggling with finding useful sources, as many are too technical for my purposes or very biased towards the company using the technique. $\endgroup$
    – user33744
    Commented Nov 13, 2013 at 15:06
  • $\begingroup$ Have you tried scholar? scholar.google.com/… and scholar.google.com/… $\endgroup$
    – jinawee
    Commented Nov 13, 2013 at 15:11

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Graphene is already commercially used in printable, conducting inks (see e.g. here). This application works with small graphene flakes in a liquid solution.

For most electronic applications, high-quality, large-area graphene placed on an insulating substrate is needed. The most promising method (in my opinion) for this end is chemical vapor deposition (CVD) of graphene on a metal and subsequent transfer to an insulating carrier. Roll-to-roll production has been demonstrated in 2010 (free access here). A more recent (2013) report can be found here.
But this method is mainly limited to the growth of monolayer graphene, bi- or tri-layer graphene cannot (yet) be grown in a controllable way using this method. That is unfortunate, since a band gap (prerequisite for transistor applications) can be opened when an electric field is applied perpendicular to the bilayer graphene sheet. Another possible drawback of the CVD method is that the transfer process (from metal to an insulating carrier) might introduce disorder and defects into the graphene film.

Another method is surface graphitization of hexagonal SiC. With this method, high-quality graphene layers can be grown on a wafer scale. See e.g. here, here or here.

This are only two possible methods, but in my opinion they are the most promising ones.

A nice review which summarizes possible applications and requirements on the graphene film can be found here. Also predictions about integration of graphene in different applications is giving there. Note, that it's from 2012, so we should have graphene touchscreens by now :-)

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