December 2013

In July we reported that China's Ningbo Morsh Technology is establishing a new graphene production line that will have an annual capacity of 300 tons (or tens of millions of graphene films). The line was supposed to be operational by August 2013, and now there are reports from china that finally production began.

The report further says that China plans to build a state-level graphene industrialization base in China's Chongqing Municipality. Within 5 years, they hope to reach revenues of 100 billion yuan ($16.35 billion). If the capacity is indeed 300 tons per year, than China is now the world's leading graphene producer by far.

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2013 is soon over, and it was yet another year with exciting new graphene research and commercialization news. Here are the top 10 stories posted on Graphene-Info in the past year, ranked by popularity:

1. Lockheed Martin to commercialize a new graphene water desalination technology (Mar 19)
2. Graphene Aerogel, the world's lightest material ever made (Mar 23)
3. Graphene Nanochem successfully raised $50 million, trades in the UK's AIM exchange (Mar 29)
4. UCLA's laser-scribed graphene supercapacitors are ready for commercialization (Feb 26)
5. Wanna make graphene-oxide at home? Here's how (Apr 11)
6. Interview with Bluestone Global Tech's CEO (Apr 9)
7. Bluestone Global Tech now offers a 24" by 300" graphene film on copper (Feb 8)
8. Graphene defects can make it weak as the material exhibits a Pseudo Hall-Petch effect (Mar 31)
9. The Wall Street Journal reports on the graphene IP gold rush (Aug 26)
10. Durham Graphene Science (now Applied Graphene Materials) to go public (Oct 14)

Here's for an awesome 2014. Hopefully this year we'll actually see more graphene-based products on the market!

Graphene Nanochem installed a second reactor at its Nanomaterials facility, in Senawang, near Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The company says this new reactor will double the company's graphene capacity to two tons per year.

Graphene Nanochem plans to continue and expand its production capacity in 2014 and 2015 as the company hopes to start offering graphene-based drilling fluids soon. Yesterday the company said it will build a graphene hub in Malaysia in cooperation with the National Innovation Agency of Malaysia.

Researchers from the US, Singapore, Brazil and Ireland have theoretically shown that if you fold a graphene sheet in a fin-like structure and expose it to a magnetic field you open up a bandgap. This will also produce spin-polarized current, which should make it useful in Spintronics applications.

The researchers say that this folding can be easily achieved by depositing graphene on a substrate with periodic trenches.

Graphene Nanochem, in cooperation with the National Innovation Agency of Malaysia are going to develop Malaysia's national graphene hub. The hub, which will be launched in Q2 2014, will focus on the development of graphene and the commercial applications for graphene.

Graphene Nanochem says that the Malaysian government has identified graphene as a key material for driving technologies and commercial applications. They hope to turn Malaysia into a global graphene innovation hub.

Nano Carbon, a poland-based startup established in 2011, announced it has began to produce graphene materials. The company will offer these materials via its online store.

The company uses technology developed at the Institute of Electronic Materials Technology in Warsaw and is co-owned by mining giant KGHM and the Industrial Development Agency (ARP). The method, an adaptation of epitaxy, relies on the crystallization of carbon from an outer source, which means the carbon is settled down in the form of a one or two atom thick layer on the surface. The EMT says that the process is efficient and cheap and uses commercially available equipment.

Researchers from Singapore's A*STAR institute discovered that graphene outperforms ITO as solar panels transparent electrodes. The researchers say that stacking four graphene sheets is the best method - as more graphene sheets decrease the resistance but blocks more light.

A single graphene sheets blocks less than 3% of light which means more light can reach the solar panel. Graphene's efficiency as a solar panel electrode depends on the type of light absorbed by the panel. For solar panels that absorb near-infrared light graphene is only slightly less effective than ITO, while graphene would be ideally suited to photovoltaic cells with a very broad absorption range, such as a recently developed organic solar cell that can harvest light from 350 to 850 nanometers.

Researchers from Korea's Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNITS) developed new graphene-based FETs (G-FETs), based on boron/nitrogen co-doped graphene nanoplatelets.

The researchers major breakthrough is the development of a new efficient method to produce those BCN-graphene platelets via a simple solvothermal reaction using potassium. Doping the GNPs opens up a bandgap.

Researchers from MIT and the University of California at Berkeley developed a new way to evenly functionalize graphene with oxygen at low (50-80 C) temperatures. The method is environmentally friendly (no harsh chemical treatment) and can be applied on a large scale.

The researchers use low-temperature annealing and this cause the oxygen atoms to form clusters. This leaves areas of pure-graphene between the oxygen clusters. This decreases the graphene's electrical resistance by four to five orders of magnitude (the oxygen clusters are insulating) which is good for applications such as sensing, electronics and catalysis.