Recent Development of the Transformation from Amorphous Carbon to Graphene Method via Metal Catalyst

Graphene has drawn wide attention owing to its excellent properties since the discovery in 2004. There are many methods to produce graphene so far but many challenges still exist in producing scalable and high quality graphene. Thus, preparation of graphene should be further explored. Amorphous carbon and graphene are two allotropes of carbon. As one kind of solid carbon source, amorphous carbon could also be used to produce graphene. The preparation of graphene from amorphous carbon via metal catalyst has aroused much interest. Here, the advantages of using amorphous carbon as solid carbon source, to get high quality and large size graphene via metal catalyst in recent years are summarized. Several influence factors, such as metal sort, annealing temperature, the ratio of amorphous carbon to metal, have been discussed elaborately. Meanwhile, transformation mechanism from amorphous carbon to graphene has been reviewed and summarized simultaneously. Finally, the prospect of this novel fabrication method for graphene was put forward.