The British Haydale, the Company focused on enabling technology for the commercialization of graphene, announced that its subsidiary EPL received a £261,000 Regional Growth Fund (RGF) grant by the Leicester and Leicestershire Enterprise Partnership (LLEP).

The grant will be provided in the first quarter of 2015, and is aimed at part-financing EPL's testing of fiber-reinforced thermoplastic composite pipes towards commercialization of the product process in the US oil and gas industry. EPL and Haydale are working to incorporate graphene into the thermoplastic composite pipes to enhance oil and gas permeation resistance of these materials as well as increasing the materials' long term durability performance.

the Korea Electrotechnology Research Institute (KERI) announced the development of a technology that enables the use of graphene for 3D printing, which is supposed to significantly improve the manufacture of flexible and wearable devices.

Their technology enables the 3D printing of objects using metal, plastic and graphene, and can be applied to diverse industrial segments with printed electronics particularly in mind.

The U.S Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced a $1.2m grant for the Arkansas Research Alliance (ARA) to extend a collaborative research program focused on graphene-based nanomaterials.

The ARA stated that the research will be focused primarily on the safety and toxicity of graphene and its impact on public health. This project will be a collaborative effort between the ARA and the National Center for Toxicological Research (NCTR), the FDA's primary research facility. Four research universities will also take part in the research.

The Australian Talga Resources announced a graphene research and development program with Friedrich Schiller University Jena, a renowned German materials research organization.

The program has an initial six month duration and will focus on using Talga's graphene to develop superior conductive ink development with potential applications in printable, flexible electronics and other applications (possibly including batteries).

Researchers from Cambridge University, together with a team from Beijing Institute of Technology, developed a unique multifunctional sulphur electrode that combines an energy storage unit and an electron/ion transfer system.

The electrode uses a metal organic framework (MOF) as a 'template' to produce a conductive porous carbon cage. Sulphur within the cage acts as the host and each sulphur-carbon nanoparticle acts as an energy storage unit. Graphene is wrapped around the sulphur electrode to speed the transfer of ions and electrons.

Imec, the Belgian micro and nanoelectronics research center, together with Ghent University, demonstrated the world's first integrated graphene optical electro-absorption modulator (EAM) capable of 10Gb/s modulation speed in a recent IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM 2014).

The modulator combines low insertion loss, low drive voltage, high thermal stability, broadband operation and compact footprint. Such integrated can be highly beneficial for future chip-level optical interconnects.

Kumaun University plans to set up a center for nanoscience and nanotechnology in Nainital, India. The center will rely on knowldege from universitited in USA, Singapore and more and is expected to play a key role in the production of nanohydrocarbon graphene for the first time in the country.

The center is planned to become operational in 2015, and aims to produce about 100gm of graphene each day.

According to a report from a Chinese website, The Spanish Graphenano, along with the University of Cordoba and Grabat Energy, developed a polymeric graphene battery, especially suited for electric cars, that will be cheaper and lighter than conventional batteries and will run 1000km on a 10 minute charge. Graphenano claims that this revolutionary battery will be put into production in 2015.

Polymeric batteries can have a longer lifetime compared to conventional hybrid ones (up to four times!) and due to graphene's light weight, the battery itself will be light enough to improve the electric car's fuel efficiency.

Spanish researchers discovered a way of using lead atoms and graphene to create a powerful magnetic field by the interaction of the electrons' spin with their orbital movement. The scientists believe that this discovery could come in handy for spintronics applications. 

The researchers from IMDEA Nanoscience, the Autonomous University of Madrid, the Madrid Institute of Materials Science (CSIC) and the University of the Basque Country say that the key to their discovery was intercalation of atoms or Pb islands below the hexagons of carbon that make up graphene. This brings about a significant interaction between two electron characteristics - their spin and their orbit.