A printer and some ice make 3D objects out of graphene

graphene structure on aerogel

Efforts to make 3D objects out of graphene have proven pretty difficult.

The material, discovered in 2004, is 1 million times thinner than a human hair, 300 times stronger than steel, and it’s the best known conductor of heat and electricity. So, it’s easy to image the potential applications.

Recently, scientists poured graphene oxide suspension, a gel-like form of the material, into freezing molds to create 3D objects. The process works, but only with simple structures that have limited commercial applications.


A research team may have solved that problem. In the journal Small, they describe how they used a modified 3D printer and frozen water to create lattice-shaped cubes and a three-dimensional truss with overhangs using graphene oxide.

The structures could be an important step toward making graphene commercially viable in electronics, medical diagnostic devices, and other industries.

“Graphene is notoriously difficult to manipulate, but the structures we built show that it’s possible to control its shape in three-dimensional forms,” says Chi Zhou, assistant professor of industrial and systems engineering at the University at Buffalo and a corresponding author of the study.

How they did it



“By keeping the graphene in a cold environment, we were able to ensure that it retained the shape we designed. This is an important step toward making graphene a commercially viable material,” says Dong Lin, assistant professor of industrial and manufacturing systems engineering at Kansas State University and the study’s other corresponding author.


Source: University at Buffalo

The post A printer and some ice make 3D objects out of graphene appeared first on Futurity.

Source: Futurity