Laser annealing may improve graphene inks

German scientists at the University of Siegen, along with scientists from the KTH-Royal Institute of Technology in Kista, Sweden, claim that laser annealing can improve the quality of printed graphene (and other 2D materials) inks. This can be beneficial for various applications like flexible electronics devices, including batteries and supercapacitors, transistors, solar cells and displays.

The researchers succeeded in producing uniform, transparent and conductive graphene thin films by simply drop-casting dispersions of the carbon sheet onto a glass surface and combining this drop-casting step with laser annealing. The annealing process involves scanning a laser beam across the surface of the films, which distinctly improves their transparency and how well they conduct electricity.