Researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, developed a new coating technology a few years ago as part of their sol-gel chemistry in hydrogen-peroxide-rich solutions research. This technology uses nanometric metal oxide dots. Now this technology is used to synthesize graphene-tin oxide composites based Li-Ion battery anodes. This new application was developed in collaboration with Singapore's National Research Foundation under its CREATE program.

Graphene-tin oxide is attractive as an anode material due to its high charging capacity, thigh conductivity and the fact that the graphene oxide and tin oxide nanocrystals are in close contact. But synthesizing those composites is difficult because the only way to coat an ultra-thin layer of tin oxide nanocrystals on a sheet of graphene oxide is slow, expensive and needs a high temperature. But the new coating technology is done at room temperature and is simple and thus less expensive.

Researchers from Korea developed a new gold-doped graphene based transparent and current-spreading electrode (TCSE) for UV LEDs. Graphene was already studied as a conductive layer for UV LEDs, and now it turns out that doping it with gold improves the performance.  A gold-doped graphene LED features about 20% more emission compared to an ITO LED.

UV (300-400nm) LEDs are useful in several applications such as germicidal instrumentation, biological agent identification, chemical sensing, fluorescence excitation, and optical data storage. UV LEDs can also be used to emit white light (through phosphorescence).

Graphene Laboratories is expanding their product line, and now they offer new 2D graphene-like materials. The new materials include liquid suspensions of atomically thin molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), tungsten disulfide (WS2) both transition metal dichalcogenides (TMD’s) and boron nitride (BN).

The new materials are available at Graphene Lab's online store.

In the past few weeks we've been busy updating graphene-info, mainly adding new sections (graphene events, reports, history and jobs-board) and a Facebook page. Now we're happy to announce a new design for the site. We have added a top-menu that gives easy access to most of the content on our site, removing the rather clunky right-side resources box. Additionally, we opened a new Twitter account, so you can get the latest graphene news with those tools.

We hope that the site will be easier to use now. Please comment and tell us if you like this new look, suggestions for making it even better, and any errors you witness...

Researchers from Purdue University discovered a while that using silver nanowires can dramatically increased graphene's conductivity. The nanowires are used to bridge defects and crystal boundaries. Now researchers from the University of Texas demonstrated how this works.

When making large graphene sheets, there are many defects (ripples, folds and tears) and also large graphene sheets are currently made from many small crystals, and the boundaries between the crystals scatter the electrons. The Texas researchers grew graphene on copper foil using CVD. This sheet had a resistance of over 1,000 ohms. Transferring a film of silver nanowires to the graphene sheet lowered the resistance to 64 ohms. The sheet still retained good transparency (94%). A bi-layer graphene-silver-nanowire sheet resulted in lower resistance (24 ohms) - and 91% transparency.

Researchers from the Max Planck Society are researching how a graphene nanowire conducts electricity. They discovered that electrons are tunneling through the graphene wire - by means of a quantum mechanical process. The researchers used a scanning tunneling microscope to perform complicated measurements to determine how the conductance of the carbon strip depends on its length and the energy of the electrons.

The researchers say that those graphene wires (or nanoribbons) are interesting research objects, but aren't very useful for nanoelectronics applications. At least not yet. 

Graphenea has launched an online store, and the company now offers several graphene materials including CVD graphene films (on SiO₂, copper and any substrate that the customer provides), graphene oxide and reduced graphene oxide. The company is also building a distribution network in main graphene markets (such as the US, Japan and Korea).

Graphenea has a pilot line with a capacity of 50,000 cm²/year and they plan to expand it during 2013. Graphenea says that their customer list includes Nokia, Philips, Corning and ASML.

Researchers from Stanford University managed to build a solar cell made entirely from carbon. Solar panels made from such materials can provide high performance at a low cost. The entire panel can be built using a coating process (the materials are soluble) and can be made flexible.

The two electrodes in the device are made from graphene and single-walled carbon nanotubes. The active layer (sandwiched between the electrodes) is made from buckyballs (which can be used to create graphene quantum-dots, by the way).

XG Sciences announced that it had launched a joint program with Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to develop a titanium-graphene composite using an advanced powder metallurgy manufacturing process.

Titanium is light, strong and corrosion resistant - and is useful in many industrial, commercial, and military applications. The problem is that it has low thermal conductivity. The programs aims to solve this issue by adding graphene - which has excellent thermal conductivity. In this collaboration, XG Sciences has the capability to mass-produce graphene nanoplatelets in high volume, while ORNL has unique capabilities for low-temperature powder metal processing.

Researchers from Sharif University of technology have produced new graphene-based materials (CeO2TiO2) nanoparticles that can absorb pollutants in water. The new CeO2TiO2 nanoparticles were prepared in room temperature ionic liquid on graphene nanosheets. The researchers managed to move the energy gap of TiO2 towards longer wavelengths through the synthesis of carbon-based TiO2 / CeO2 nanocomposite. They also managed to increase the photocatalytic activity of TiO2.

Those particles managed to degrade water pollutants because of the the unique structure of graphene, which increases adsorption on the catalyst surface and decreases the re-composition of ion carriers.