Antonio Castro Neto: The Worldwide Graphene Flake Production

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at National University of Singapore There are hundreds of companies worldwide claiming to produce “graphene,” showing a large variation in its properties. A systematic and reliable protocol is developed to test graphene quality using electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy, Raman spectroscopy, elemental analysis, X-ray photoelectron spectrometry, and scanning and transmission electron microscopy, which is used to study graphene from 60 producers. The statistical nature of the liquid-phase exfoliation of graphite is established. It is shown that the current classification of graphene flakes used in the market is erroneous. A new classification is proposed in terms of distribution functions for number of layers and flake size. It is shown unequivocally that the quality of the graphene produced in the world today is rather poor, not optimal for most applications, and most companies are producing graphite microplatelets. This is possibly the main reason for the slow development of graphene applications, which usually require a customized solution in terms of graphene properties. It is argued that the creation of stringent standards for graphene characterization and production, taking into account both the physical properties, as well as the requirements from the particular application, is the only way forward to create a healthy and reliable worldwide graphene market.  Prof. Antonio H. Castro Neto got his Ph.D. in Physics at University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign in 1994. In 1994, he moved to the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California at Santa Barbara as a postdoctoral fellow. In 1995, he became an Assistant Professor at University of California at Riverside. In 2000, he moved to Boston University as Professor of Physics. At Boston, Prof. Castro Neto became one of the leading theorists in the study of graphene and other two dimensional materials. Since 2010, Prof. Castro Neto is the Director of the Graphene Research Center and in 2014 he became Director of the Centre for Advanced 2D Materials funded by the National Research Foundation of Singapore. Prof. Castro Neto is a Distinguished Professor in the Physics Department and in the Department of Material Science Engineering, he is also Professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, at the National University of Singapore. In 2003, Prof. Castro Neto was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) and in 2011 he was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He is the Colloquia Editor for Reviews of Modern Physics, and member of the Editorial Board of “Chinese Physics B” and “Acta Physica Sinica”. Prof. Castro Neto was awarded the 11th Ross J. Martin Award by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; the University of California Regent Fellowship; the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship; the visiting Miller Professorship by the University of California, Berkeley; the visiting Gordon Godfrey Professorship by the University of New South Wales, Australia; the Distinguished Visiting Chair Professor at the SKKU Advanced Institute of Nano-Technology (SAINT), South Korea; the Hsun Lee Lecture Award by the Institute of Metal Research at the Chinese Academy of Sciences; and Kramers Professorship at the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands. In 2016, Prof. Castro Neto founded 2D Materials (2DM) Pte Ltd in Singapore for the development of high quality graphene, and in 2017 he founded MADE Advanced Materials Pte Ltd for the development of graphene composites with carbon and glass fibers.