Turbostratic graphene is a metastable graphene phase in which adjacent layers are rotationally misaligned and electronically decoupled, rather than stacked in the ordered AB or ABC registry of graphite. The source archive flash Joule heating dossier identifies it as a characteristic product of Flash Joule Heating (FJH) synthesis and notes that it is characterized by Raman spectroscopy.
Formation and control
According to the dossier's excerpt of the 2025 Nature Reviews Clean Technology review and a JACS abstract, current and pulse-width control during flash Joule heating tunes the product across a sequence from amorphous carbon through turbostratic graphene to ordered AB/ABC graphene or graphite. The JACS abstract reports that the electric field catalyzes graphene formation and lowers the activation energy, supported by density functional theory calculations.
Reported properties and uses
The dossier's review excerpt reports that flash graphene raises cement compressive strength by about 25% at 0.05 wt% loading, and that surface areas up to 1,338 m² g⁻¹ are achievable via a molten-salt route. Morphology control is described through FeCl₃ catalysis (below 1 wt%) for 1D CNTs/nanofibres and calcium salts as blowing agents/proppants producing holey, wrinkled flash graphene.
All such figures are author-reported in abstracts and a review excerpt; the dossier contains no independent replication.
Further reading
A 2025 Materials review sets out the Raman, XRD and TEM signatures used to identify turbostratic graphene. It also notes that molecular-dynamics simulations shorter than 5 ns could not reproduce turbostratic stacking: How Flash Graphene Forms: A 2025 Review of Joule-Heating Synthesis, Characterisation and the Limits of Its Mechanism (Mahmood et al., Materials).
The core flash graphene patent, US12054391B2, claims bulk material in which most of the graphene is turbostratic. As its evidence it cites Raman features it labels TS1 (near 1880 cm⁻¹) and TS2 (near 2030 cm⁻¹): The Granted Flash Graphene Patent (US12054391B2): What Rice University Claimed for Pulse-Heated Carbon.
Related pages
Flash Joule Heating (FJH) · James M. Tour · Rice University
Source notes & attribution
- https://rexresearch.com/FlashJouleHeating/FlashJouleHeating.html