Microbes from nearby river help produce graphene

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Graphene is cool stuff. Researchers around the world are studying the single-atom layers of carbon, and the American Physical Society's March meeting in Boston devoted 40 sessions to the topic.
But producing the stuff has been difficult. Now the graphite research group at Toyohashi University of Technology, in Aichi, Japan has come up with a new trick to simplify the process. Just add bugs.
Graphene is essentially sheets of carbon atoms peeled from graphite. In fact, Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov of the University of Manchester in the UK first produced graphene by pulling layers of carbon atoms from graphite with sticky tape. The results were good enough to earn them the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics, but it's hardly scalable for mass production.
The leading contender for large-scale production is depositing films of graphene oxide, then removing the oxygen to leave sheets of pure graphene. However, chemistry or heat are needed to pull off the oxygen atoms, and both have their problems. The best chemical for the job is hydrazine, but its vapour is highly toxic. The thermal process is extremely complex.
The germ of the new idea came from reading that microbes could reduce graphene oxide. To try the idea for themselves, the Toyohashi Tech group collected some sediment from a nearby river and cultured bacteria from it under anaerobic conditions. Then they added graphene-oxide films on silicon sheets to the culture, spiced it with a dash of sodium acetate, and let it sit for three days. When they analysed the results, they found they had produced good-quality graphene sheets up to 100 micrometres across.

Thank you : newscientist.com