Fig. 2. Historical landmarks in the development of three representative synthesis techniques.

Lefthand panels show timelines of milestones for a chemical vapor deposition (CVD), b liquid exfoliation, and c wet chemical synthesis methods. The abbreviations correspond to: metal-organic CVD (MOCVD), graphene (Gr), graphite oxide (GO), reduced GO (rGO), and molybdenum disulfide (MoS₂). Righthand panels show the corresponding strengths and weaknesses of these methods in terms of mass production (MP), thickness controllability (THK), temperature variation (TEMP), uniformity (UNI), material diversity (MAT), crystal quality (QLTY), morphology (MORPH). Panel a reprinted from refs. ^9,17, American Association for the Advancement of Science, ref. ¹⁵, Nature, refs. ^7,10,12, Wiley, ref. ⁵, American Institute of Physics, ref. ⁶, Royal Society of Chemistry, and ref. ¹¹, World Scientific. Panel b reprinted from refs. ^26,27, American Association for the Advancement of Science, refs. ^22,23, Wiley, refs. ^19–21, Elsevier, and ref. ²⁴, Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. Panel c reprinted from ref. ²⁸, Elsevier, ref. ³⁰, American Chemical Society, ref. ³¹, Elsevier, and ref. ³², Royal Society of Chemistry.