Since Andre Geim won the Nobel prize, grapheme is regarded a next new ‘wonder material’. However, where are the applications? Shou-En Zhu of Delft Univerisity of Technology will present a breathtaking one at the Sense of Contact sensorconference: a pressure sensor made from graphene.
With endless hours of work, building and testing his home-built equipment, Zhu successfully produced graphene on cheaper and larger scale than was executed so far. Currently, in order to produce this game-changing material, it requires large and expensive equipment. The materials engineer was able to design graphene production equipment for 20,000 euros, seven times less than what the current equipment costs. |
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Zhu claims that he wants to do something new that can benefit society and believes that graphene can change the world and do just that.
Shou-En Zhu will present a pressure sensor based on the piezoresistive effect of graphene. The sensor is a 100 nm thick, 280 μm wide square silicon nitride membrane with graphene meander patterns located on the maximum strain area. The multilayer, polycrystalline graphene was obtained by chemical vapor deposition. Strain in graphene was generated by applying differential pressure across the membrane. Finite element simulation was used to analyze the strain distribution. By performing electromechanical measurements, a gauge factor of ∼1.6 for grapheme was obtained, with a dynamic range from 0 mbar to 700 mbar for the pressure sensor. Large Scale Graphene |