Did Thomas Edison Synthesize Graphene in 1879?

10 January 2025, Version 1
This content is a preprint and has not undergone peer review at the time of posting.

Abstract

Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor famous for his breakthroughs in stable electric lighting. He founded one of the first modern research laboratories in Menlo Park, New Jersey, United States, and invented the first commercially viable electric lightbulb in 1879. Here, we recreated conditions like those used by Edison to produce his original carbon filament light bulb and show that the carbon filament was converted into graphene. This suggests that Edison might have indeed formed the same in his experiments 145 years ago.

Keywords

graphene
Joule heating
Thomas Edison
light bulb
turbostratic
2-dimensional

Supplementary materials

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Description
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Title
Did Thomas Edison Synthesize Graphene in 1879? Supporting Information
Description
Supporting Information Notes, graphs and figures. (PDF).
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