June 2012

Nickel-Iron batteries (invented by Thomas Edison more then 100 years ago) are very durable but suffer from very slow charge and discharge times. They are used today mostly to store power from wind and solar devices.

Now we hear that researchers from Standford University managed to increase the charge/dischage rate by nearly a 1,000 times - by adding Graphene to the Nickel-Iron mix. In fact, the batteries they developed can be fully charged in two minutes, and dischaged in less than 30 seconds.

MIT scientists have shown (in simulations) that nanoporous graphene can filter salt from water at a rate that is 2-3 orders of magnitude faster than today’s best commercial desalination technology, reverse osmosis (RO). This could lead to more efficient and smaller water desalination facilities.

Simulated nanoporous graphene filtering salt ions

The graphene is used as a membrane material that allows a flow of water with full salt refection via size exclusion. Other materials have been investigated for the same purpose, but the researchers say that graphene is the "ultimate" thin membrane as it's the thinnest one possible and as water flux across a membrane scales inversely with the membrane’s thickness.

Researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Maryland have shown that subjecting graphene to mechanical strain can mimic the effects of magnetic fields and create a quantum dot.

The researchers fabricated graphene "drumheads" by suspending graphene over shallow holes in a substrate of silicon dioxide. When using unique scanning probe microscope designed and built at NIST, they noticed that the graphene rose up to meet the tip of the microscope— a result of the van der Waals force, a weak electrical force that creates attraction between objects that are very close to each other. The strain in the "drumhead" could be tuned by using the conducting plate upon which the graphene and substrate were mounted to create a countervailing attraction and pull the drumhead down. This changed the material's electrical properties.

Researchers from the University of California have used a beam of infrared light to send ripples of electrons along the surface of graphene. The length of heights of the plasmons oscillations can be controlled using a simple electrical circuit.

It was already suspected that plasmons will be present on graphene, but this is the first real demonstration. The actual device used is a sheet of graphene on a silicon dioxide chip.

The National University of Singapore's Graphene Research Centre have launched their new graphene fabrication facility. The new facility will be fully operational by October (the cost is $15 million Singapore dollars, or about $11.8 USD).

The NSU plans to use the facility to develop new technologies for flexible and transparent devices and some new designs that doesn't even exist today.

Researchers from Stony Brook University developed a new efficient graphene-based MRI contrast agent that's potentially safer and cheaper than current gadolinium-based agents. The new agent can also improve disease detection because of its sensitivity and diagnostic confidence.

Dr. Sitharaman, who led the research, has established a new company called Theragnostic Technologies which is set to commercialize this new agent.

Researchers developed a new graphene based film that can detect trace amounts of environmental contaminants. The film is made from semiconductor-graphene-metal, by taking a graphene sheet and depositing metal (silver) nanoparticles and semiconductor titanium dioxide on either side.

The film can be used to test water quality, and this requires precise control over metal deposition and size. The film is capable of selectively splitting hydrogen and oxygen.

Graphene has been used to develop photodetectors for quite some time (quantum dots have been found to enhance the sensitivity just last month), and now researchers from the University of Maryland (UMD) discovered that using bilayer graphene can be used to make ultra fast, broad-range photodetectors.

The team made a prototype device, which unfortunately has a high electrical resistance and so needs a lot of light to be useful. They are working to lower this now.

Haydale announced that Cheap Tubes Inc. (CTi) will act as its exclusive agent for the supply of the Haydale HDPlas nano products in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. HDPlas are Graphene Nano Platelets (GNP) powders made from mined graphite crystal (using Haydale's unique patented Split Plasma based technology. CTi will also supply Haydale's Split Plasma treated Carbon Nano Tubes.

Mildred Dresselhaus was awarded the 2012 Kavli prize in Nanoscience for her work on carbon-based nanostructures and nanoscale electron-phonon interaction. Back in the 1960s, Dresselhaus led one of the very first groups that explored the carbon materials that form the basis for 2D graphene and 1D carbon nanotubes.

Dresselhaus studied intercalated two-dimensional graphene sheets and provided important insights into the properties of not only 2D graphene, but also of the rich interactions between graphene and the surrounding materials. She also pioneered Raman spectroscopy as a sensitive tool for the characterization of materials one atomic layer in wall thickness, namely carbon nanotubes and graphene.