In an age when huge is the new hip, how could the touchscreen be left behind? And graphene has now been rolled out in 30-inch sheets, which pledges to make one hell of a touch-screen.

Graphene is what you get if you can separate a one-atom thick layer from graphite, which is usually used as a pencil lead. The sp²-bonded carbon atoms are packed super-tight in a honeycomb lattice. It has amazing properties, including flexibility, which enables its use as a conductor in touch screens and flat panel TVs. And now, from the hands of the same Korean scientists who created the 10-centimeter graphene film, has come the latest and largest 30-inch sheets of the same stuff.

The team from the Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU) in Seoul, led by scientists Byung Hee Hong and Jong-Hyun Ahn, used chemical vapor deposition (CVD) to grow the graphene sheets on large sheets of copper foil. After coating the graphene with a thin layer of adhesive, the copper foil was dissolved away. They next used a polymer support onto which the graphene was rolled. After removing this polymer layer, a thin graphene film was left. The team then repeated the whole process to form a sheet consisting of four layers of the material. Treating this final sheet with nitric acid further improved its electrical conductivity.

What the team finally achieved were rectangular high-quality sheets, measuring 76cm along the diagonal. Compared to commercially available transparent electrodes such as ITO (Indium Tin Oxides), the graphene sheets demonstrated 90 percent transparency, double the durability and superior electrical resistance. The team also created a prototype working touchscreen panel, which conspicuously outperforms standard ITO electrodes.

Graphene touchscreen in action!

The new leap for graphene-functionality comes as a huge relief to electronics companies, who have been constantly fretting over dwindling indium availability. Using just a tiny amount of carbon with other readily available substances, graphene provides a very promising future. If all goes well, it won’t be too long before graphene finds its way into our lives on a large-scale basis.