Graphene-Info: the graphene experts

ZEN Graphene Solutions has announced that Evercloak and ZEN have been awarded CAD$125,000 (around USD$92,000) each as part of a Next Generation Manufacturing Canada (NGen) Project.

The project entitled “Advancing Large-Scale Graphene and Thin-Film Membrane Manufacturing” will support the scale up of graphene oxide (GO) production by ZEN to supply GO to Evercloak for their scale up and optimizing activities. NGen supports collaborative technology projects that enable the development of world-leading advanced manufacturing capabilities in Canada.

Thomas Swan has signed an exclusive agency agreement with Concrene.

Thomas Swan’s Graphene Nano Platelet (GNP) products have been tested in a number of concrete dispersions by Concrene and have shown compressive strength improvements of greater than 20% with loading of less than 1% by weight.

Directa Plus has announced that its G+ graphene-enhanced facemasks, Co-mask, are now available for retail sale at a new, dedicated website.

“Since the dangers of COVID-19 first started to become apparent, Directa Plus has been determined to help with the fight against the disease, and to use the unique properties of graphene and the strength of Directa Plus’s IP portfolio to enhance personal protective equipment. The company redirected effort and resources in its Advanced Development Area, R&D facility, to achieve this,” Directa Plus said in a statement.

After recently closing the first tranche of its private placement, Zen Graphene Solutions has now announced the closing of the second tranche. The Company raised total gross proceeds of CAD$2,049,999.80 (around USD$1.5 million) under the Offeringץ

According to Zen, the funds will be used for ongoing work on the Albany Graphite Project including graphene research and scale up, COVID-19 initiatives and other graphene applications development and for general corporate purposes.

NanoXplore has announced the completion of the commissioning of its state-of-the-art 4,000 metric tons/year commercial graphene capacity facility in Montreal, Province of Quebec.

NanoXplore’s new graphene facility is a fully automated production plant that enables a connected, flexible and continuous manufacturing system. Production automation ensures the highest level of product quality, from receipt of raw materials, to final packaging of NanoXplore’s GrapheneBlack powders. The new facility uses lean production techniques to manage all operational processes and all process inputs are managed by Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs). The lack of manual processes within the production line facilitates batch-to-batch product consistency complimented with the highest level of quality assurance.

Researchers from Nagoya University Synchrotron Radiation Research Center (NUSR), Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Accelerator Laboratory, High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK), UVSOR Facility, Institute for Molecular Science (IMS), National Institutes of Natural Sciences and Hiroshima Synchrotron Radiation Center at Hiroshima University have shown that photocathodes that produce electron beams for electron microscopes and advanced accelerators can be refreshed and rebuilt repeatedly without opening the devices that rely on them, provided the electron emitting materials are deposited on graphene.

“The machines that rely on these electron emitters typically operate under high vacuum,” said Los Alamos National Laboratory physicist Hisato Yamaguchi. “By choosing graphene over materials like silicon or molybdenum, which tend to degrade during use, we can clean the substrate and redeposit electron-emitting materials without opening the vacuum. This can dramatically reduce downtime and labor involved in replacing photocathodes.”

A new collaborative study has reported a 17-carbon wide graphene nanoribbon and found that it has the tiniest bandgap observed so far among familiar graphene nanoribbons prepared through a bottom-up approach.

(a) Bottom-up synthesis scheme of 17-AGNR on Au(111), (b) high-resolution STM image, and (c) nc-AFM image of 17-AGNR. Image Credit: Junichi Yamaguchi, Yasunobu Sugimoto, Shintaro Sato, Hiroko Yamada.

The study is part of a project of CREST, JST Japan including Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST), the University of Tokyo, Fujitsu Laboratories and Fujitsu.