One of the main problems in our society is the energy production and storage.  Ion-Li batteries are commonly used as an alternative for energy production but have the disadvantages of a poor recharged cycles and the possibility of fire.  Researches are done to develop efficient anodes and cathodes for batteries and one of the possible alternatives is the use of graphene.  Due to its unique planar structure, transparency, mechanical strength, thermal properties, and electronic conductivity, graphene is a very promising material for nanoelectronic devices, sensors, energy-storage and/or transparent conducting electrodes applications. The exceptional properties of graphene are a consequence of the continuous network of hexagonally arranged sp²-bonded carbon atoms in a 2D-structure. Among the different synthesis processes to obtain graphene (i.e. chemical exfoliation, mechanical cleavage, epitaxial growth or chemical vapor deposition-CVD), the last one (CVD) is considered as the most promising procedure to obtain continuous graphene flakes, with very low level of defects. Although the presence of unwanted byproducts and structural damages is unavoidable, this method is one of the most suitable for large-scale and controllable synthesis of graphene. Commonly, the synthesis of graphene by CVD requires a copper or nickel sheet as substrate, and alcohols or methane as carbon source.

In this research, a CVD method, slightly modified with respect to the standard procedure, has been used to obtain graphene flakes (see Figure 1). Thus, a mixture of ethanol:N₂:H₂ was used to obtain a blue plasma at high temperature, responsible for the synthesis of graphene. A complete analysis of the as-synthesized graphene flakes has been performed using a combination of tools including scanning and transmission electron microscopies (SEM and TEM), Raman spectroscopy, X-ray photoemission spectroscopy (XPS), atomic force microscopy (AFM) and infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR).