Technical / Research - Page 6

Rice University and Houston-based M-I SWACO, the world's largest producer of drilling fluids for the petrochemical industry, have signed an agreement for research funds to develop a graphene additive that will improve the productivity of wells.

The company will spend $450,000 over two years for research by the lab of James Tour, Rice's Chao Professor of Chemistry and professor of mechanical engineering and materials science and of computer science.

Via NanoWerk

Pablo Jarillo-Herrero has won the 2009 David and Lucile Packard fellowship. He was granted 875k$ (a five-year grant). Pablo will use this to study unique features of Graphene and also to study topological insulators.

Via AZoNano

A team of scientists from the Grenoble High Magnetic Field Laboratory in France, has published a new study called "How perfect can Graphene be?" - in which they report how they found that their naturally occurring graphene sample possessed a carrier mobility almost two orders of magnitude higher than other types of graphene, and a scattering time that significantly exceeds those reported in any man-made graphene samples. Both properties could open the doors for future developments in graphene technologies.

IBM researchers are using graphene sheets to make photo(light) detectors. Graphene transports electrons very quickly, tens of times faster than current photo detectors (made by materials called III-V semiconductors), and can also absorb more light frequencies (visible and infrared).

It is already known that when metal contacts are deposited on graphene, electric fields are generated at the interface between the two materials. So the researchers took advantage of this field. Their device is a piece of multilayered graphene with metal contacts on top. When they shine light near the contact, the field separates the electrons and holes, and a current is generated.

A single-sheet of Graphene can absorb 2.3% of the light falling on it, which is a lot for a one-atom-thick material. 

An ultra-fast photodetector could be used to make next-gen optical communication networks ( with rates over 40-gigabits per second), optical computers, medical equipment, and more. 

Via Technology Review

Researchers at MIT have designed new hierarchical assemblies of graphene nanoribbons through hydrogen bonds, inspired by biological structures found in nature such as proteins and DNA macromolecules. Their work brings about a synergistic viewpoint that combines advances in materials development and insight gained from biological structures, and leads to new understanding of the mechanics and physics hydrogen bonds at the bio-nano interface.

Buehler, the Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Associate Professor at MIT's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, together with his postdoctoral associate Zhiping Xu, have investigated the mechanical and electronic properties of graphene nanoribbons through first principles calculations. They demonstrate that hierarchical graphene nanoribbons not only preserve the unique electronic properties of individual graphene nanoribbons in the bulk, but are also energetically and mechanically stable.

European researchers discovered that stretching graphene can make it a good semiconductor. Normally, there is a lack of a 'gap' Graphene's energy spectrum. This gap is present in silicon and other materials used by the semiconductor industry. Without the gap, Graphene tends to 'leak' energy when used as a transistor. 

The researchers discovered that when you stretch graphene, the semiconducting gap opens. 

Researchers from PNNL discovered that adding Graphene to Titanium-Dioxide batteries can make them last 3 times as long.

This might prove to be a good replacement for Lithium-Ion batteries which perform great but are very expensive. Batteries made of Titanium-Dioxide will be much cheaper, and are less fire-prone.

Via Eurekalert