Graphene is the thinnest substance known so far, made up of a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice. This structure gives it many unusual properties that hold great potential for real-world applications: batteries, supercapacitors, antennas, water filters, transistors, solar cells, and touchscreens, just to name a few. The physicists who first synthesized graphene in the laboratory won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics. But according to a new paper published in the journal ACS Nano, 19th-century inventor Thomas Edison may have inadvertently created graphene as a byproduct of his original experiments on incandescent bulbs a century earlier.
“It’s very exciting to be able to reproduce what Thomas Edison did with the tools and knowledge we have,” said co-author James Tour, a Rice University chemist. “Finding that it could produce graphene raises curiosity about what other information lies hidden in historical experiments. If our scientific ancestors could join us in the lab today, what questions would they ask? What questions might we answer when we revisit their work through a modern lens?”
Edison did not invent the concept of the incandescent lamp; There were several versions prior to his efforts. However, they generally had very short life spans and required high electrical currents, so they were not suitable for Edison’s vision of large-scale commercialization. He experimented with different filament materials, starting with carbonized cardboard and compressed lampblack. It also, like the filaments made from various grasses and canes such as hemp and palmetto, burned quickly. Eventually Edison discovered that carbonized bamboo made for the best filament, with a life of over 1200 hours using a 110-volt power source.
Lucas Eddy, Tour’s graduate student at Rice, was trying to figure out ways to mass-produce graphene using the smallest, simplest equipment possible, with materials that were inexpensive and readily available. He considered alternatives such as arc welders and natural phenomena such as lightning striking trees – both of which he admitted were “completely dead on”. Edison’s light bulb, Eddy decided, would be ideal, because unlike other early light bulbs, Edison’s version was able to achieve the critical temperature of 2000 °C required for flash Joule heating – the best method for creating so-called turbostrategic graphene.
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