Researchers at Penn University designed a unique graphene-based sensor that works in three ways simultaneously. Since proteins trigger three different types of signals, the sensor can calculate that data to produce sensitive and accurate results, far superior to typical one-trigger sensors. This integration of data from multiple factors on chip can be greatly beneficial to various fields that require sensing abilities, like advanced disease detection.

This technique is said to provide more accurate data on the quantity of a given protein in a sample, and could also be used to eventually make a single sensor that could detect a wide range of triggers. The researchers' sensors are built with a base of silicon nitride, coated with a layer of graphene. Graphene’s extreme thinness and electrical properties allow for the mechanical, electrical, and optical modes to operate simultaneously without interfering with one another, and it is also helpful since it is carbon-based and so it is an attractive bonding surface for proteins.

Researchers from the Institute of Optoelectronics & Nanomaterials at Nanjing University of Science and Technology used density functional theory computations to identify novel 2D wide band gap semiconductors called arsenene and antimonene.

The materials are typical semimetals in their natural layered state. However, monolayered arsenene and antimonene are indirect wide band gap semiconductors, and under strain they become direct band-gap semiconductors. Scientists believe that such dramatic transitions of electronic properties could bring new possibilities for nanoscale transistors with high on/off ratio, optoelectronic devices and sensors based on new ultrathin semiconductors.

Paul Gill from Lomiko Metals is our second featured personal Graphene-Info interview. If you wish to be featured, contact us here. 

Paul Gill, CEO of Lomiko Metals, Lomiko Technologies: tasked with overseeing the development of a graphene incubator and graphite supplier to the graphene industry

What was the last book you read? Practical Magic by Stephen R. Lankton

What was the last movie you saw? The Maze Runner or Hunger Games

Students at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton school have designed a graphene-based way to measure ground water contamination from leaking fracking fluids. As wastewater from fracking potentially contains toxic materials, there is a concern that it might leak into drinking water and contaminate it.

The Penn students' plan is to use graphene to measure minuscule amounts of hydrocarbon benzene a known carcinogen. Benzene remains in the ground after drilling and might be transported by groundwater. Despite being deadly, benzene is difficult to measure since it occurs in fracking fluids in very low concentrations. Using graphene, the students can measure benzene even in picomolar amounts (as graphene is several millions times thinner than a piece of paper, which allows it to have a high surface to volume ratio).

Researchers at the Trinity College Dublin in Ireland discovered a method of making large quantities of black phosphorus with dimensions that can be controlled. Black phosphorus is a form of phosphorus in which phosphorus atoms form a two-dimensional sheet, which is thought to be well suited for various electronics applications as it naturally has a bandgap (among other properties).

Black phosphorus, however, is known to be hard to manufacture in large amounts, a problem which the researchers claim to have solved. The TCD researchers placed a black phosphorus lump in a liquid solvent and then bombard it with sound waves. As a result, the mass separated into a large number of nanosheets that they using a centrifuge. That resulted in high-quality nanosheets consisting of only a few layers.

An Irish 16-year-old student named Elle Loughran used graphene to construct a sensor that can detect brain tumors. The sensor, designed with the support of CRANN in Trinity College Dublin, was featured in the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition event in Dublin, Ireland.

The sensor measures levels of a protein called attractin in the cerebrospinal fluid, which can be sampled from a patient through a lumbar puncture procedure. As elevated levels of this protein indicate a glioma (a type of brain tumor), detecting it can be helpful in detecting tumors. 

Researchers at the US Department of Energy's (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California, Berkeley, have developed a new approach for synthesizing graphene nanoribbons from pre-designed molecular building blocks. Using this process the researchers built nanoribbons that have enhanced properties (tunable bandgaps, for example) that can be potentially useful for advanced electronics.

The recent IDTechEx Graphene Live! event featured a unique graphene-enhanced guitar, made of carbon fiber with epoxy encapsulation. The guitar is presented by Perpetuus' Ian walters, who tells of a failed first attempt at making it. The second time around, the guitar was successfully made and proves to be light, strong and with excellent sound. The guitar was auctioned off with proceeds going to charity.

The University of Nottingham unveiled its new Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) machine, capable of reaching the high temperatures required to grow graphene and boron nitride layers on an industrial scale. This is the first machine of its kind in the world, and the researchers are hoping it will "unlock the full potential of graphene in electronics and optoelectronics".

Over £2m were invested in the design, purchase and other costs of the machine, by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, The University of Nottingham and the Leverhulme Trust. Professor Sergei Novikov, the lead scientist in this project, stresses that this is indeed a high risk project, but one that could potentially change paradigms toward growing large-area graphene and boron-nitride sheets by bonding together carbon atoms at high temperatures.