Scientists from Imperial College London and Catania University & CNR-IMM have developed a novel graphene ink that can be used to detect a variety of chemical substances when layered on top of commercially available printed circuit boards (PCBs) as a thin film.

In their recent paper, the team demonstrated a novel and versatile sensing platform, based on electrolyte-gated graphene field-effect transistors, for easy, low-cost and scalable production of chemical sensor test strips. The Lab-on-PCB platform is enabled by low-boiling, low-surface-tension sprayable graphene ink deposited on a substrate manufactured using a commercial printed circuit board process. 

Researchers from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) have developed graphene-enhanced biosensor technology that enables the operation of devices, such as robots and machines, solely through thought control.

 The technology has significant potential in fields such as defense applications, advanced manufacturing, aerospace and healthcare. The advanced brain-computer interface was developed by Distinguished Professor Chin-Teng Lin and Professor Francesca Iacopi, from the UTS Faculty of Engineering and IT, in collaboration with the Australian Army and Defense Innovation Hub.

A research team, led by Profs. Chen Wei and Wei Wei from the Shanghai Advanced Research Institute (SARI) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has developed a novel graphene/silicon carbide (SiC) catalyst for efficient CO₂ photoelectroreduction to ethanol (C₂H₅OH).

Using sunlight to produce valuable chemicals and fuels from carbon dioxide (CO₂), i.e., artificial photosynthesis (AP), is a promising strategy to achieve solar energy storage and a negative carbon cycle. However, selective synthesis of C₂ compounds with a high CO₂ conversion rate remains challenging for current AP technologies. The composite catalyst in this work, which comprises SiC substrate, interfacial layer (IL), and few-layer graphene overlayer, can help to achieve the precise control of active intermediates for C-C coupling.

Researchers from the University of Manchester in the UK, Wuhan University and Tsinghua University in China and Kansas State University in the U.S have found that nanoripples in graphene can make it a strong catalyst, contrary to predictions that the carbon sheet is as chemically inert as bulk graphite.  

Led by Professor Andre Geim from the National Graphene Institute (NGI), the researchers found that nanorippled graphene can accelerate hydrogen splitting as well as the best metallic-based catalysts. The findings were unexpected, as previous research predicted that graphene would be as chemically inert as the bulk graphite from which it is obtained. The effect is likely to be present in all two-dimensional materials, which inherently are all non-flat.

Haydale has announced it is working with City Energy Network Limited and Plumbase Limited on developing and distributing its graphene underfloor heating ("UFH").

The ink heater technology applied to clothing worn by British athletes at the Tokyo Games has been applied in an initial prototype for domestic UFH with the potential to replace gas central heating and link into other energy efficient technologies.

Professor Lars Borchardt’s team at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, has succeeded in carrying out light-driven chemical reactions in the solid-state without resorting heavily to solvents. The team stated that this provides a sustainable alternative to established synthesis methods.

Light is considered the ideal driving force of chemical reactions as it’s cheap, available in abundance and produces no waste. This is why light-driven, i.e. photochemical reactions are highly attractive for the production of chemical compounds. However, they are usually carried out in huge amounts of solvents that are often toxic and generate hazardous waste in enormous quantities. Solid-state photochemical reactions without solvents could present an alternative. However, they have hardly been feasible so far, as they could only be mixed insufficiently and so it was possible to scale them up to relevant quantities.

A team of researchers at China's Tsinghua University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University have developed a graphene-based intelligent, wearable artificial throat (AT) that is sensitive to human speech and vocalization-related motions. It is a wafer-like tool one centimeter square that can allow barely audible sounds, or even whispers, to be converted into speech at normal volume.

The device is about the width of plastic cling wrap. The 25-micrometer deep device may be applied to one's throat with a simple adhesive. Tiny wires connect to a microcontroller powered by a coin-sized battery.