The fundamental design principle that we will always fall back on is to mimic the action of manual exfoliation. The procedure of manual exfoliation has been constantly refined ever since the discovery of graphene. So, we believe that by mimicking the way manual exfoliation is done, our machine can produce useful graphene.

Exfoliation will be performed by adhering two pieces of tape together, with graphite flakes placed in between, before pulling the tapes apart. Repetition of this process is the key to quality exfoliation. Following exfoliation, we will deposit the graphite/graphene onto a silicon substrate by pasting one of the pieces of tape onto the substrate. The silicon substrate facilitates our search for useful thin layers of graphene among all the graphite.