I don't exactly understand what the author means by open sourcing graphene. If they mean putting the methods used to produce and do things with graphene out the

I don't exactly understand what the author means by open sourcing graphene. If they mean putting the methods used to produce and do things with graphene out there in the open, scientific journals are for the most part already doing this(although not all journals are open access). One can also copy whatever is in a patent as long as one doesn't attempt to sell it. If the author is suggesting that amateurs do interesting work with graphene we run into a couple problems. It's difficult for amateurs to obtain even basic chemical reagents and labware. Most chemical suppliers won't even sell to amateurs. Not to mention that some of these chemicals involved can be pretty nasty. There's also the issue of all the equipment needed to evaluate stuff made with graphene. Microscopes and mechanical testers can be pretty expensive. That being said graphene suffers from similar problems to other nanomaterials. While we can obtain high strength, we can only do so with close to atomically perfect sheets. We still don't have a good way to make large atomically perfect materials, so we can only achieve these high strengths with microscopic flakes of graphene. In addition, the roll to roll process they mentioned is still going to be pretty expensive. It's slow and energy intensive making it difficult to produce by the kilogram, much less the ton. It's also been noted that graphene really doesn't have much of a killer app[0], with most graphene applications being only marginally better than alternatives. Now much of the hype around graphene came from it's electronic properties. The big attraction was that one could do many of the things we wanted to do with carbon nanotubes, that is making smaller faster transistors, using standard CMOS processing equipment[1]. The problem is that its still difficult to make graphene exhibit a band gap, which is important for making computer chips so that we can make transistors which actually turn off. [0] https://www.nature.com/news/graphene-booms-in-factories-but-lacks-a-killer-app-1.17771 https://www.nature.com/news/graphene-booms-in-factories-but-... [1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/0911.4685.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/0911.4685.pdf