Turn PMMA into a sheet of graphene

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v468/n7323/full/nature09579.html
This work done by James M. Tour's group will certainly be a huge impact in graphene production.

They show that the graphene can be grown by solid state materials like polymer, more incredibly, they said that they can even control the layer number of synthesized graphene by tuning the annealing condition, such as the flow rate of Ar and H2 gas during the growth process.

They accounted for this effect by introducing an idea that H2 is able to serve as reducing agent as well as a carrier gas to remove carbon released from PMMA. And the hydrogen flow rate is essential since the remain carbon sources determined the number of layer will grow.

In addtion to the PMMA-derived graphene, they also used fluorene and sucrose to demonstrate the possible way to grow monolayer graphene.

Moreover, they blended melamine and PMMA and make them into N-type graphene by introducing some nitrogen atoms in the framwork of carbon.

They really did an incredible job, it seems that anything contain carbon can be used to grow the graphene. That sounds pretty amazing, doesn't it?