Haydale announced a new 230 m² dedicated manufacturing area at its South Wales, UK facility to keep up with rapidly growing demand for these ground breaking materials.

Haydale graphene inks are manufactured using plasma functionalised HDPlas® Graphene Nanoplatelets (GNPs) to deliver performance benefits including: metal-free, electrical conductivity, flexibility, and durability. Haydale graphene ink is formulated to be ready-to-use and can also be customized for individual applications. Their patented HDPlas® plasma process allows Haydale to use with a range of different raw graphene materials and to add the chemical functionalisation to meet desired performance for a wide range of specific applications.

Applied Graphene Materials announced their financial results for 2014. Pre-tax losses for the year ended in 31 January 2015 was £1.9 million, up from £1.2 million in the previous year. The increase is mostly due to AGM's increased invesetment in production, business infrastructure and new employees. AGM has about £6.6 million in cash as of the end of January 31.

AGM says that they are anticipating future growth and to support this new growth they had to increase expenses. The company remains confident of progress in 2015, and they see accelerated graphene sampling by customers. Production volume has been increased in past months. 90% of AGM’s ongoing engagements are with its three core target markets of advanced composites, coatings and functional fluids.

Scientists at the University of Illinois at Chicago engineered a humidity sensor on a bacterial spore. They call it NERD, for Nano-Electro-Robotic Device. They've taken a spore from a bacteria and put graphene quantum dots on its surface, then attached two electrodes on either side of the spore. Then they change the humidity around the spore,causing the spore to shrink. As it shrinks, the quantum dots come closer together, increasing their conductivity, as measured by the electrodes.

The researchers report a very sharp reaction once the humidity is changed, around 10 times faster than a sensor made with the most advanced man-made water-absorbing polymers. There was also better sensitivity in extreme low-pressure, low-humidity situations. The researchers also said it is possible to go all the way down to a vacuum and see a response, which is important in applications where humidity must be kept low,like preventing corrosion or food spoilage and space applications, where any change in humidity could signal a leak.

A team of physicists led by Philippe Lambin from the Université de Namur in Belgium has found that a graphene plane can provide an effective absorbent shield against microwaves. The scientists demonstrated that the conductivity of several graphene layers grows when thin polymer spacers separate them. Maximum microwave absorption in the Ka communications band between 26.5 and 40 GHz is achieved with six graphene planes separated by layers of poly-methyl methacrylate (PMMA), a transparent plastic also known as acrylic glass.

A single layer of graphene can absorb up to 25% of incident microwave radiation. With a multilayer graphene/PMMA arrangement, the absorption rises to 50%. This can be explained by analysing the transmission and reflection of a plane wave at the interface between two dielectric media, when the interface contains a thin conducting layer. In this way, the researchers were able to optimise their graphene-PMMA structures for maximum absorption, with the results confirmed by electromagnetic testing.

The National Graphene Institute was recently opened in the UK, in an official ceremony that also included another intriguing event.

Professor Sir Kostya Novoselov demonstrated to the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne the graphene light bulb, which was mentioned to be set to launch later in 2015. While the price is yet unknown, it is rumored to be relatively low-price, cut energy use by 10% and last longer owing to its conductivity.

Earlier this month, the first mass produced graphene-enhanced phone was rumoured to be near commercial sale by Chinese companies. Now, further details are available as it seems that the device is available on the company's website.

The phone, called the Galapad Settler, is said to use graphene for its touchscreen, as well as casing and battery. 30,000 pieces were made by Chinese graphene company Moxi together with Chinese device maker Galapad, with each device selling for $399 USD.

Back in 2013, Rice scientists developed a simple method to reduce coal into graphene quantum dots (GQDs). Now, these Rice researchers have found a way to engineer these GQDs for specific semiconducting properties in two separate processes.

The researchers' work demonstrates precise control over the graphene oxide dots' band gap, the very property that makes them semiconductors. By sorting the QDs through ultrafiltration, it was found possible to produce quantum dots with specific semiconducting properties. The second process involved direct control of the reaction temperature in the oxidation process that reduced coal to quantum dots. The researchers found hotter temperatures produced smaller dots that had different semiconducting properties. The dots in these experiments came from treatment of anthracite, a kind of coal. The processes produce batches in specific sizes between 4.5 and 70 nanometers in diameter.

Researchers from Israel's Bar Ilan University discovered that preheating the gas precursors in atmospheric-pressure CVD graphene production results in 100% reproducibility, and higher quality graphene sheets.

The researchers say that the graphene produced in the new method required a lower processing temperature and exhibited 50% less defects compared to graphene made without gas preheating. In addition, all experiments (100% reproducibility) performed with gas heating led to "acceptable quality" graphene - compared to only 15% of the experiments performed without gas preheating.

The National Graphene Institute at The University of Manchester has been officially opened, in an opening ceremony that included dignitaries, scientists and business leaders.

The institute received almost £40 million of government support as part of the wider £90 million UK investment in graphene and will enable researchers and industry to work together on a huge variety of graphene-related potential revolutionary applications.

Haydale reported their financial results for H2 2014 - with revenues rising to £480,000 million (up from £60,000 in H1 2014, but this includes £360,000 generated by EPL). Loss before tas was £1.57 million (up from £580,000 in Hq 2014). In the beginning of 2015, Haydale had £3.95 million in cash.

During the past six months, Haydale increased their production capacity with two more R&D plasma reactors, signed a commercial collaboration with Alex Thomson Racing to develop graphene-enhanced composite solutions for racing boats, and signed a 5-year exclusive commercial agreement with Swansea University. EPL (acquired by Haydale in November 2014) was awarded £261,000 to test graphene-enhanced composite for oil & gas pipes.