Graphene and its Derivatives: Characterization, Mass-production, and Practical Applications

Dear Colleagues,

Since the Nobel physics prize for graphene in 2010, there have been lots of engineering activities related to graphene and its derivatives. Graphene has outstanding physical properties such as excellent mechanical strength, high optical transparency, high electrical conductivity, bandgap tunability, ultrafast charge carrier mobility, excellent thermal conductivity, etc. By utilizing these physical properties, research engineers have tried to find key applications of graphene in the areas of machinery, composite materials, consumer electronics, sensors, displays, solar cells, and energy storage devices.

One of the puzzling aspects of graphene and its derivatives is that the outstanding properties of graphene disappear when its scale increases. Monolayer graphene of small lateral dimensions has wonderful properties, as reported by academic studies, but the properties degrade when the lateral dimension increases due to intrinsic and extrinsic defects and interactions with other materials. In addition to this scale-up issue, engineers are struggling to develop cost-effective characterization and manufacturing methods for incorporating graphene into practical applications.

This Special Issue is focused on the practical applications of graphene and its derivatives, as well as mass-production or scale-up methods and their characterization techniques. Topics include, but not limited to, the following:

• Novel applications of graphene and its derivatives;
• Original designs of graphene-based electrical, optical, mechanical, chemical, biological, and multi-functional devices;
• Cost-effective characterization techniques for large-area or huge-volume graphene and its derivatives;
• Cost-effective manufacturing methods for graphene and its derivatives;
• Graphene-based layers for display, solar cell, and energy storage applications;
• Graphene barriers for semiconductor devices and consumer products;
• Graphene-based metamaterials for electromagnetic waves;
• Graphene-based composite materials for structural and electromagnetic applications;
• Graphene-based applications for biological and medical applications;
• The tribological evaluation of graphene and its derivatives;
• Commercialization strategies and business models for graphene-based products;

I would like to organize this Special Issue to show the current status of graphene-related applications and to collect useful ideas for overcoming critical hurdles to their commercialization. I invite you to submit your contributions to this Special Issue, constituting the best of your research activities.

Prof. Dr. Jae-Hyun Kim
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Materials is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• graphene
• carbon nanotube
• 2D materials
• flexible/stretchable electronics, displays
• solar cells
• solid lubricant, barrier
• mechanical property, electrical property, optical property, roll-to-roll production, transfer, lift-off