CINNO Research Industry Information, the IBS Institute of Basic Sciences in Korea and the R&D teams in China and Switzerland have recently developed large-scale single-crystal secondary material technology that can be applied to next-generation panels and batteries.
According to the Korean media Biz.chosun report, on May 28, the IBS multi-element carbon material R&D team led by Feng Ding and the R&D teams in China and Switzerland stated that they have successfully produced large-area substrates with high-performance secondary element composite material technology. The research and development results were published in the international academic journal Nature.
In order to make ultra-thin cell phone panels and batteries and other electronic devices, a secondary material with high conductivity and strength is needed. The secondary material is an ultra-thin substance with a thickness of 1 atom (1 nm). The most representative is graphene with hexagonal carbon atoms.
In order to manufacture secondary materials, an ultra-thin metal substrate with a frame role is required. For the manufacture of graphene, it is necessary to evaporate carbon substances by heating, and arrange carbon atoms on a suitable 2-dimensional metal substrate. In order to ensure that the carbon atoms on the metal substrate can be arranged into a hexagon, it also needs to have an appropriate pattern structure.
But as of now the metal substrate in use has two limitations. One is that the internal crystalline structure is not uniform enough, also known as a polycrystalline structure. The secondary material formed by this also has a polycrystalline structure, but the polycrystalline structure has low conductivity and strength, and the material performance is not high.
Second, the area of the metal substrate is small. The secondary material produced by this also faces the limitation of area and cannot be applied in the fields of large-size panels or industrial batteries.
The R&D team successfully overcomes these two difficulties. After the R&D team attached small single crystalline metal pieces to the polycrystalline metal blocks, they were heated at 1020 degrees Celsius and slowly cooled down. As a result, the crystals around the polycrystalline block are realigned uniformly, and the entire metal block becomes a single crystal.
After cutting this into thin slices, a large-area single-crystal metal substrate can be produced. The R&D team used this technology to produce a large area of two-dimensional material with a cross section of 39cm*21cm.
The R&D team stated that although copper and nickel were used in this R&D, other metal materials should be able to use the same method.
Feng Ding Leader said: The production of large-area single crystal metal substrates has been one of the topics in the field of materials science for many years. The large-area single-crystal substrate produced through this research and development can be applied to a variety of single-crystal secondary material synthetic molds.