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View submission: Ask Anything Wednesday - Engineering, Mathematics, Computer Science
Not only is graphene, and graphene oxide, still a very expensive additive, it's also exceptionally difficult to work with due to its very very very low bulk density. A 75 gram sample of graphene oxide for example is the size of a small throw pillow or a large phonebook, as if it's just a bag filled with black smoke almost. Because it's so fluffy, it's super difficult to mix it (compound it) with high performance polymers/plastics, so again the final price goes up. Graphene's still too prohibitively expensive for large scale production to make full use of it's many high performance characteristics, but these costs have come down dramatically in the past 10-20 years. Think of it like solar which used to be expensive and inefficient, but every year we learn it's even cheaper and better; graphene's just like that but only recently starting to become viable vs its cost. It used to be bleeding-edge expensive, now it's "just" leading-edge expensive.
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