August 2013

A new high-tech accelerator in the Netherlands, called High Tech XL, is looking for ten startups for a six-month mentoring programme (which will start on November 11). High Tech XL's areas of focus include advanced materials such as graphene (other areas are the internet of things, semiconductors, robotics and autonomous vehicles).

High Tech XL are looking for startups that require an investment of €500,000 to €2.5 million. HTX will not provide these funds, but will help the companies achieve the investment via its access to a pool of over 200 investors and of course will help with the business plan and more - as it backed by 110 dedicated mentors.

The University of Manchester is building the UK's National Graphene Institute (NGI) with help from the UK government's £50 million graphene drive. Today the University announced that it appointed the NGI's business development and strategy director.

The National Graphene Center plan

Nathan Hill (a physicist turned business manager) will focus on strategy and business development for the NGI. Nathan's first goal will be to set up a graphene industry club and a number of strategic partnerships with major companies. The University hopes Nathan will help them ensure that they remain the "home of graphene research".

Researchers from MIT developed a new way to p-dope graphene (and open up a bandgap) without harming the material's electronic properties a lot. The process basically dopes with chlorine using a plasma-based surface functionalization technique. The researcher say that their chlorine-doped graphene keeps a high charge mobility (around 1500 cm²/V) after the hole doping.

Using this process, you can get the chlorine to cover over 45% of the graphene surface, the highest surface coverage area reported for any graphene doping material. In theory, covering 50% of the graphene with chlroine in both sides can open up a 1.2 eV band gap. This means that the 45% currently achieved is very close to this target. The researchers plan to start using suspended graphene sheets so that they can cover both sides.

Researchers from Korea's KAIST institute used graphene to make metals hundreds of times stronger. The researchers developed a composite graphene-copper material that is 500 times stronger than pure copper and a graphene-nickel one that is 180 times stronger than nickel.

The researchers created a layered structure of graphene and metal. Using CVD they grew a single graphene layer on a metal substrate and then deposited the second metal layer on top. This is the first time such a design has been produced using a single graphene sheet. The researchers explain that the graphene blocks the dislocations and cracks from external damage to travel into the material.

The wall street journal posted an interesting article and video on graphene. The article discusses the current state of research and business, possible graphene applications and the rush to patent related technologies.

The article starts with the Cambridge graphene research center and then discusses several companies and their graphene programs, including IBM, Nokia, BlueStone Global Tech, Vorbeck Materials, Lockheed Martin and Aixtron.

Researchers from the University of Texas developed high performance (25-Ghz) printed graphene field-effect-transistors (G-FETs) on flexible plastic substrates. They say these are the world's fastest such transistors to date.

The researchers are very focused on keeping costs down. The fabrication process started with the non-graphene structures (the electrodes and gates), deposited on sheets of plastic. Separately they grew large sheets of graphene on metal. The graphene was then peeled off and transferred to complete the device. This "graphene-last" approach was chosen because the graphene is very sensitive to all the processing needed to make the other components. The final step was to encapsulate the circuit.

Researchers from Korea's Advanced Institute of Science and Dankook University developed a new fabrication process for foldable graphene circuits based on paper substrates. The new method uses a transfer printing process to prevent direct contact of the solvent and paper and to easily control the thickness of the deposited graphene.

The researchers say that this new process is better than ink-jet printing in some regards - it enables easy control of the circuit width, there's no need for a specialized mask for complexly patterned circuits and simple modification. They say that the thickness of the circuits can be adjusted just by varying the amount of the graphene dispersion introduced for vacuum filtration.

Graphenea researchers discovered that adding graphene to ceramic alumina can make it stronger - it is up to 50% less likely to break under strain. Graphenea's method is simple, fast and scalable, and it makes the alumina a hundred million times more conductive to electricity. Graphenea believes the same process will work for other ceramic materials such as silicon carbide, silicon nitride, titania, and zirconia.

A single graphene sheet bridges a crack in alumina

Graphenea's new process starts with graphene oxide - which is mixed with aluminium oxide (alumina) , and then they use a process known as spark plasma sintering (SPS, which drives a large electrical current through the material) to homogenize the graphene/alumina mixture. It was found that adding just 0.22% of graphene to alumina makes it 50% more resistant to the propagation of cracks under strain. Other mechanical properties stayed on par with untouched alumina, while electrical conductivity increased by a factor of a hundred million.

Researchers from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden developed a method for fast and inexpensive quality control of graphene grown on silicon carbide (SiC). This method is based on optical microscopy and is used to understand the effect of the SiC substrate on the quality of the graphene layer. The researchers say this method paves the way for optical microscopy as an industrial quality control tool of epitaxial graphene on SiC.

The researchers explain that epitaxial graphene on silicon carbide often requires quality control because the surface of the silicon carbide reconstructs during graphene growth. Steps and defects in the substrate may lead to the appearance of stepped terraces and the formation of areas with many layers instead of a single layer. This limits the performance of the electronic devices and large-scale integration.

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