February 2013

Back in January we reported about Duke University's study into crumpling and unfolding of large area graphene. This enables all sorts of applications, including artificial muscles. AzoNano posted an interesting interview with Duke's Assistant Professor Xuanhe Zhao.

Xuanhe says that crumbled graphene electrodes have a number of advantages - such as lightweight, high transparency, and superhydrophobicity. The team still needs to achieve a systematic understanding of the crumpling and unfolding of graphene, and they also need to develop a way to fabricate such devices for large-scale production.

The University of Manchester launched a £50,000 enterprise competition for students with new graphene ideas. The Eli and Britt Harari Graphene Enterprise Award is open to final year PhD students and Postdoctoral Research Associates at the University.

The University wants to find a candidate that wishes to establish a new company to commercialize an innovative graphene technology, and the applicants will need to submit a business plan for a new graphene-related business.

Vorbeck Materials and Batelle (who operates the DoE's PNNL laboratory) signed a commercial license agreement that will Vorbeck to commercialize lithium batteries incorporating Vor-x graphene technology. Those new batteries will charge faster than current Li-Ion batteries. The research effort of PNNL and Vorbeck may also lead to more stable batteries that have a higher energy density and a longer life.

PNNL, together with Princeton University developed a "substantial" graphene-based battery technologies portfolio. This, combined with Vorbeck's own graphene technologies (in conductive inks, printed electronics, composite materials, and energy storage. PNNL's technology uses tiny titanium oxide and carbon structures. Using small quantities of Vor-x graphene can "dramatically improve the performance of the batteries". In fact, Electrodes containing graphene charged and recharged three times as fast as standard titanium dioxide electrodes.

California Lithium Battery (CalBattery) have signed a licensing agreement with the US Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory. Argonne developed a silicon-graphene composite anode material (called GEN3) for high-energy lithium batteries, and CalBattery plans to commercialize this technology rapidly. Tests show that the new anode triples the energy capacity of the state-of-the-art graphite anode.

CalBattery and Argonne has been working together for over a year under a Work for Others agreement to develop this technology. Back in October 2012 CalBattery said that in independent full cell tests, the material shows unrivaled performance characteristics: an energy density of 525WH/Kg and specific anode capacity 1,250mAh/g. Just to compare, most commercial LIBs have an energy density of between 100-180WH/kg and a specific anode capacity of 325mAh/g.

Cabot Corporation launched the LITX G700, the company's first graphene-based additive for high energy density lithium-ion batteries. They say that this additive will allow L-Ion battery makers to achieve superior cell performance.

Cabot explains that the LITX G700 conductive additive is designed for use in electric vehicle and high-end consumer electronics in which better driving range and longer run times are critical performance features. This new additive is designed to deliver the conductivity needed to achieve very high energy densities in lithium-ion batteries at ultra-low loadings in comparison to conventional additives. Less loading or volume allocated to conductive additives enables more volume to be available for energy storage materials. As a result, the LITX G700 graphene-based additive delivers step change performance in conductivity at ultra-low loadings and is easily incorporated into battery electrodes.

Researchers from Spain's UPC and Georgia Tech have been granted $120,000 from Samsung to develop graphene based micrometer-scale highs-peed short-distance antennas. This project (called Graphene-Enabled Wireless Communication, or GEWC). These antennas could radiate electromagnetic waves in the terahertz band and would allow for high-speed information transmission. These antennas will be a thousand times smaller than what can be made with current technology.

The first application will probably be high-speed communication inside a single device - for example between the CPU and the memory, or between cores in multi-core processors. In fact the researchers say that this technology could lead to processor with thousands of "sub processors".

Researchers from the ICFO, MIT, Max Planck and Graphenea have demonstrated that graphene is able to concert a single photon into several electrons (most materials generate a single electron in such a case). This means that Graphene is highly efficient in converting light to energy and can be an alternative material for light detection and energy harvesting.

The researchers used a single sheet of graphene and sent a known number of photos with different colors (energies). High energy photos (violet colored for examples) create more electrons than low energy photos (such as infrared colored ones).

Back in March 2012 we posted about a UCLA research that developed laser-scribed graphene (LSG) based flexible capacitors using simple DVD burners. Now those same researchers have published a new paper describing an new structural design, which makes the capacitors compatible with other integrated circuits and enhances their capacity and speed. They are now looking for industrial partners to commercialize the technology.

Their original design stacked graphene layers to create the electrode, which was not compatible with integrated circuits. The new design uses a side-by-side electrode placement which helps to maximize the accessible surface area available for the electrodes while also reducing the path over which ions in the electrolyte would need to diffuse. The new capacitors have a higher charge capacity and rate capability.

Researchers from China's National Tsing Hua University found a new use for graphene: photothermal antibacterial therapy. The researchers say that during experiments both gram-positive Staphylococcus aureus and gram-negative Escherichia coli were efficiently captured by glutaraldehyde and concentrated (or immobilized) by the magnetic property of a magnetic reduced graphene oxide functionalized with glutaraldehyde.

The bacteria were rapidly killed by multiple means, including conventional oxidative stress as well as physical piercing and photothermal heating of graphene by near-infrared (NIR) laser irradiation.

New research done by Nokia shows that mechanically flexible all-solid state batteries can be made from monolayer graphene (provided by Graphenea and grown by CVD directly onto copper foil). The total thickness of the resulting battery was about 50 micrometer. The complete structure is a cathode graphene (on copper foil), polymer electrolyte, and anode lithium foil

The researchers report that the ultrathin battery showed the highest energy density of 10 W h L^-1 and the highest power density of 300 W L^-1. It also shows excellent cyclic stability and sustains a discharge current density of 100 microA cm^-2 over 100 cycles, maintaining energy capacity over 0.02 mA h cm^-2.