Mechanical scotch-tape peeling produces only microscopic flakes of pristine graphene; William Hummers’ 1958 chemical recipe exfoliates bulk graphite into tons of water-dispersible two-dimensional sheets. Dormant for nearly half a century, "Hummers' Method" is now the indispensable global manufacturing route for 2D water-purification membranes and conductive composites.
When physicists discovered that single-atom-thick graphene was the strongest and most conductive material in the world, the global manufacturing sector faced an embarrassing roadblock. The only way to make it was peeling graphite with adhesive tape—yielding microscopic flakes barely visible under a microscope.
The scalable solution had been written in 1958 by William Hummers: an aggressive chemical oxidation bath of sulfuric acid and permanganate. The chemicals act like microscopic crowbars, jamming oxygen wedges between tightly stacked carbon sheets and forcing them to peel apart into liquid suspensions of single-atom layers.
This fifty-year-old recipe unlocked mass-produced nanomaterials. By filtering salt from ocean water with atomic membranes, by creating ultra-fast conductive inks for flexible circuits, and by reinforcing lightweight aerospace plastics, chemical exfoliation powers the nanomaterial revolution.
Preparation of Graphitic Oxide
ADVERTISEMENT RETURN TO ISSUEPREVArticleNEXTPreparation of Graphitic OxideWilliam S. Hummers Jr. and Richard E. OffemanCite this: J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1958, 80, 6, 1339Publication Date (Print):March 1, 1958Publication History Published online1 May 2002Published inissue 1 March 1958https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/ja01539a017https://doi.org/10.1021/ja01539a017research-articleACS PublicationsRequest reuse permissionsArticle Views106696Altmetric-Citations26571LEARN ABOUT THESE METRICSArticle Views are the COUNTER-compliant sum of full text article downloads since November 2008 (both PDF and HTML) across all institutions and individuals. These metrics are regularly updated to reflect usage leading up to the last few days.Citations are the number of other articles citing this article, calculated by Crossref and updated daily. Find more information about Crossref citation counts.The Altmetric Attention Score is a quantitative measure of the attention that a research article has received online. Clicking on the donut icon will load a page at altmetric.com with additional details about the score and the social media presence for the given article. Find more information on the Altmetric Attention Score and how the score is calculated. Share Add toView InAdd Full Text with ReferenceAdd Description ExportRISCitationCitation and abstractCitation and referencesMore Options Share onFacebookTwitterWechatLinked InRedditEmail Other access optionsGet e-Alertsclose Get e-Alerts
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