▲ ACS interview article with Director Ruoff (Credit: ACS Central Science)

Director Rodney Ruoff discusses his long history with graphene and his efforts to develop new kinds of carbon materials in an interview published on March 12 with the American Chemical Society (ACS) Central Science.

The director has been studying graphene since the early 1990s even before graphene was isolated from graphite. He is a pioneer for growing large-area graphene films and has been listed by Clarivate Analytics as a possible contender for a Nobel Prize. He has published 31 papers that were cited more than 1,000 times and eight papers with more than 5,000 citations.

Working as the director of the Center for Multidimensional Carbon Materials, his current research focus has been on developing new forms of carbon called schwarzites, so-called negative curvature carbons. These negatively curved carbon molecules have been expected to be useful in battery electrodes and as catalysts, but the synthesis of these materials has been challenging.

▲ Director Rodney Ruoff (Credit: UNIST)

"It would be fascinating to be able to make these controllably, maybe by bottom-up synthesis. They have very interesting three-dimensional periodic channels that run through them, and they probably would have very good electrical conductivity and interesting optical properties," Ruoff says in his interview with ACS Central Science. He added, "I would love to see us achieve diamond in new forms, like fibers, to achieve large-area, high-strength mechanical proprieties. If we could succeed in making a diamond fiber, which has never been done before, I think that people in industry would be exceptionally interested."

Click on link for full interview https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acscentsci.9b00239