Turkey's Grafen Chemical Industries has selected Angstron Materials to supply them with graphene materails for a polymer nanocomposite application for electromagnetic shielding material.
Grafen will buy both pristine and oxidized graphene products from Angstron and plans to commercialize the EMI product for full-scale production.
The University of Manchester posted an interesting interview with Clive Rowland (CEO of the University’s Innovation Group) regarding the university's approach towards graphene commercialization, patent issues.
The University has interest in two graphene companies, 2-DTech (wholly owned) and Graphene Industries. They are currently building the £38 million the National Graphene Institute (NGI).
Neural prostheses are exciting researchers, but silicon based devices are difficult to integrate with soft tissue. Now researchers from the Technische Universität München in Germany are experimenting with graphene based neural prostheses, saying that graphene has excellent biocompatibility.
The researchers have shown that it's possible to make graphene based transistors that are gated by the solution in which the transistor sits. In other words, the natural body fluids that surround these prostheses will form an integral part of their operation. Those "solution-gated transistors" far outperform other technologies.
Bluestone Global Tech released two short videos introducing Graphene. The first focuses on the different graphene properties (strength, flexibility, conductivity, etc):
The second video is all about the different graphene applications, such as displays, LEDs, touch screens, batteries, solar cells and conductive wires
Back in October 2012 we reported that Vorbeck Materials completed their first capacity expansion step in their Jessup, MD facility (annual capacity is now over 40 tons) and they are still on track to build a new 42,000 square foot production facility in Pocomoke City, MD. Now the National Science Foundation (NSF) posted a hightlight on Vorbeck (who's supported by the NSF).
Vorbeck's Vor-ink graphene-based conductive ink for electronics is one of the first (if not the first) graphene product on the market. The Siren anti-theft packaging device, which uses their graphene-based Vor-Ink circuitry started shipping back in December 2011. Now the company posted a nice video - showing how Vor-Ink maintains its properties even after extreme crunching and bending (and washing)...
One of our readers sent me the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) interesting worldwide graphene patent filing analysis (from 2011), with some very nice infographics and details about graphene research. If you needed further proof about Graphene research's growing popularity, check out this graph showing yearly patent applications:
According to the IPO, the largest graphene patent applicants are Samsung, Sandisk, Harvard University, Univ Sungyunkwan and Teijin. This is rather interesting as we haven't heard any references to Sandisk's graphene research program (evidently focused on memory devices, which isn't surprising given the company's focus).
Researchers from Korea's Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) developed a simple and efficient way to produce Edge-selectively functionalized graphene nanoplatelets (EFGnPs) from graphite. The researchers are actually grinding graphite using a dry ball mill. The presence of chemical vapors, liquids or solids in the ball-mill crushes results in the creation of various functional groups.
Using various microscopic and spectroscopic measurements, the reaction mechanisms for the edge functionalization of graphite was confirmed.
AZoNano posted an interesting interview with Dr. Allen Clauss, Vice President of R&D for Xolve, regarding the company's use of graphene and other nanomaterials to improve a wide array of polymer composites.
Xolve's technology allows them to to determine optimum solvents to tune a solvent set for a wide range of nanomaterials. Simply put, it means they can put nanoparticles in solution. Using this technology they develop nano particlesâgraphene nanoplatelets, for instanceâthat are free of dispersants, oxygen molecules or other molecules attached through functionalization. Allen says they can produce very pure, therefore very active, graphene and other nanomaterials and do so at low cost.
Researchers from the University of Manchester discovered that sandwiching graphene between boron nitride layers can produce highly-accurate capacitors. Such capacitors could be cheaper and easier to fabricate compared to traditional transistors.
The researchers used quantum capacitance spectroscopy to investigate the exceptional properties of graphene, as this measurements shows better accuracy.
Graphene Laboratories have signed a two-year strategic alliance agreement with Canada's Lomiko Metals which owns several resource properties containing high-grade graphite. The two companies will co-develop a vertically integrated supply chain that includes a secure supply of high-quality graphite, cost-effective and scalable processing, tight quality control and integration of graphene-based products in end-user products.
As part of the agreement, Lomiko will provide mineral samples from the Quatre Milles Project, which will be used to test natural graphite to graphene conversion. Graphene labs will develop the graphite purification process.