In early November, the graphene-info team visited the UK - the birthplace of graphene. Our first stop was Cambridge - visiting FlexEnable and Cambridge Nanosystems - and then we headed for the Cambridge Graphene Center for a two-day graphene conference. We finished the tour with a trip up north to Manchester, to see the NGI, Manchester University's Graphene institute.

While we try to be on top of everything that is related to graphene, our first impression from the visits and the conference is that the graphene industry is much more active than it seemed. There are many very exciting projects, some on the verge of commercialization, and it looks like graphene is going to make a larger impact than we expected in the near future. We came back very encouraged!

Startup funding network Angel Capital Group (ACG) is making a $8.7 million investment in Oak Ridge-based advanced materials startup General Graphene Corporation, an undertaking by a major entrepreneur in the Tennessee region.

The funding will allow GGC to produce the machine that will then in turn make the graphene. The first prototype will be built in Oak Ridge and enter pre-production. ACG and a syndication partner have extended General Graphene a term sheet for the entire round, and it will be completed by the end of the month.

Graphene-Info takes great pride in inviting its readers to check out Perovskite-Info.com, our new site focused on perovskite developments, applications and market. We treat it with the same amount of care and deliberation as our other sites, to bring you only the best and most up-to-date picture of the happenings in the field.

Perovskites are a fascinating group of materials that share a similar structure and display a myriad of exciting properties like superconductivity, magnetoresistance and more. These easily synthesized materials are considered the future of solar cells, as their distinctive structure makes them perfect for enabling low-cost, efficient photovoltaics. They are also predicted to play a role in next-gen electric vehicle batteries, sensors, displays, lasers and much more.

A couple of weeks ago Haydale announced that they plan to raise funds by ways of a new shelf issue, and now Haydale reported that the new issue was successful and the company raised around £6.0 million.

Haydale's revenues in 2015 reached £644,000 (up from £19,000 in 2014) while total income (which includes government grants) reached £1.48 million (up from £129,000). Most of the increase in income came from EPL Composites (now renamed Haydale Composite Solutions, or HCS) - which generated £1.18 million in income. Haydale loss rose to £2.38 million.

Researchers from the University of Tokyo demonstrated an electrically controllable valleytronics device. The device converts regular electrical current to valley current and then passes it through a 3.5 micron channel. The valley current is then converted back to electrical current that can be detected (via its voltage).

To create this new device, the researchers used a bi-layer graphene that is placed between two insulator layers made from hexagonal boron nitride (hBN). This structure is then placed between two conductive layers (or gates) which control the valley. This device operates at -203 degrees Celsius - much higher than expected, and the researchers hope that in the future devices such as this could operate at room temperatures.

The National Graphene Institute (NGI) at The University of Manchester has entered into a collaborative partnership with Alpha, an electronic soldering and bonding materials supplier, to develop the next generation of graphene-based electronic materials.

Researchers at A*STAR have developed an 'asymmetric' supercapacitor based on vertically aligned graphene nanosheets coated with iron nitride and titanium nitride as the anode and cathode, that could be a viable energy storage solution.

While traditional supercapacitors use the same material for both electrodes, the anode and cathode in an asymmetric supercapacitor are made up of different materials. Scientists initially used metal oxides as asymmetric supercapacitor electrodes, but as metal oxides do not have particularly high electrical conductivity and become unstable over long operating cycles, it was clear that a better alternative was needed.

Researchers from Glasgow University have come up with a method to mass produce graphene in a process that is reportedly much cheaper to employ than the current one.

The team used CVD in their research, but instead of using the traditional surface, used copper foils as the surface wherein high-grade graphene is created. As these copper foils are much cheaper than the usual substrate, the cost of production decreased dramatically.

A few weeks ago Applied Graphene Materials announced that its performance in the 2015 financial year (which ended on July 31) was slightly ahead of company expectations.

AGM now reported their final results - revenues were 41,000 GBP (up from 4,000 pounds) and the pretax loss was £4 million ($6.11 million USD) - up from a loss of £2.7 million in fiscal 2014. The company says that they significantly broadened its pipeline of identified collaboration opportunities, and provided over 120 evaluation samples to customers in more than 20 countries.

Haydale announces that it has received confirmation from the European Patent Office (EPO) of the decision to grant a European Patent for its proprietary HDPlas® functionalization process for graphene and other nanoparticulate materials.

The European Patent is the key process patent underlying the Company's proprietary functionalization treatment and is one of a number arising from the families of patent applications surrounding Haydale's unique plasma functionalization process. Haydale already has a granted patent in China and has visibility on the patent application in Australia, which is expected to proceed to grant within the next 3-4 months.