Graphene
The theory of graphene was first explored by Wallace in 1947 as a starting point for understanding the electronic properties of 3D graphite. The emergent massless Dirac equation was first pointed out by Semenoff, DiVincenzo and Mele. The earliest TEM images of few-layer graphite were published by Ruess and Vogt in 1948. An early, detailed study on few-layer graphite dates to 1962 when Boehm and colleagues reported producing monolayer flakes of reduced graphene oxide. Efforts to make thin films of graphite by mechanical exfoliation started in 1990, but nothing thinner than 50 to 100 layers was produced before 2004. Initial attempts to make atomically thin graphitic films employed exfoliation techniques similar to the drawing method. Multilayer samples down to 10 nm in thickness were obtained.
Graphene production techniques
In 2014 a laser-based single-step, scalable approach to graphene production was announced. The technique produced and patterned porous three-dimensional graphene film networks from commercial polymer films. The system used a CO2 infrared laser. The sp-carbon atoms were photothermally converted to sp-carbon atoms by pulsed laser irradiation. The result exhibits high electrical conductivity. The material can produce interdigitated electrodes for in-plane microsupercapacitors with specific capacitances of >4 mF cm and power densities of ~9 mW cm. Laser-induced production appeared to allow roll-to-roll manufacturing processes and provides a route to electronic and energy storage devices.