December 2015

2015 is pretty much over - and it was another interesting year for the graphene industry. Graphene-based products are slowly entering the market, but more importantly we see new projects, development and investments as people start to realize the amazing potential in this new material.

Here are the top 10 stories posted on Graphene-Info in 2015, ranked by popularity (i.e. how many people read the story):

1. Sunvault Energy and Edison Power present a 10,000 Farad graphene supercapacitor (May 7)
2. Sunvault's graphene-based supercapacitor declared to someday replace Lithium-ion batteries and compete with Tesla's battery aspirations (Apr 10)
3. Stanford scientists make graphene-aluminum battery that charges quickly and lasts over 7,000 cycles (Apr 8)
4. Graphene 3D Lab starts selling conductive graphene filament for 3D printing (Mar 16)
5. Will Tesla's Roadster 3.0 use a graphene-enhanced battery? (Jan 5)
6. Berkeley scientists design graphene-based loudspeakers and microphones (Jul 7)
7. World's first commercial graphene-based supercapacitor chosen for use in spacecraft (May 5)
8. IDTechEx's analyst explains his views on the graphene market (Sep 4)
9. Scientists design a large-scale roll-to-roll graphene manufacturing process (May 21)
10. Graphene-enhanced guitar shown at Graphene Live! (Jan 12)

Saint Jean Carbon, a publicly traded carbon science company, announced that it, along with their industry partners, will complete a prototype of a graphene-enhanced diamagnetic wire that will conduct energy at room temperature with superconducting level resistance. The process to build the wire is planned to take a few months, and the model will first be prototyped at 36 inches in length with a goal to measure the energy resistance under varying loads. This should, for example, give a better understanding on how a superconducting wire can greatly enhance the electricity transfer from an electric motor to a battery.

The design is based on relatively simple principles: the outer housing (casing) is a non-conductive rubber compound and the inner sleeve is a resin binder with a high concentration of diamagnetic graphene. The center core is a magnetic graphene wire and the diamagnetic force holds the center core in place while the energy passes along the path of the neutralized middle core.

Researchers at Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France, have found that coating a cobalt film in graphene could double the film's perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA), so that it reaches a value 20 times higher than that of traditional metallic cobalt/platinum multilayers that are being researched for this property. In a material with a high PMA, the magnetization is oriented perpendicular to the interface of the material's layers. High-PMA materials are being researched for their applications in next-generation spintronic devices, such as high-density memories and heat-tolerant logic gates. 

A major goal in developing spintronic devices is to reduce the size of the devices while achieving long-term information retention of 10-plus years. In order to do this, the storage material must have a large PMA. Enhancement of effective PMA could be achieved either by increasing the surface PMA or by minimizing the saturation magnetization of the storage layer. These co-graphene heterostructures benefit from both these properties. The PMA enhancement in the graphene-coated cobalt films originates at the atomic level, where graphene affects the energy of cobalt's different electron orbitals. The graphene coating changes how these orbitals overlap with one another, which in turn changes the direction of the cobalt film's overall magnetic field: some of the magnetization that was originally parallel to the film surface is now oriented perpendicular to the film surface.

Researchers have reported a graphene-based material with special electric properties, which might enable the production of better energy storage devices. The material follows the predictions of physicists from the University of Luxembourg that three years ago had theoretically predicted the unusual characteristics of a particular composite material. These calculations could now finally be confirmed by experiment in cooperation with the Centre de Recherche Paul Pascal in Bordeaux, France, and resulted in the discovery of a so-called high-k-material, which might enable the production of better energy storage devices the basis for smaller, faster and more efficient electronics.

Earlier calculations indicated disappointing results - certain compound materials made of polymers and flaky graphene, as opposed to those made of polymers and carbon nanotubes, did not increase the conductivity of the material to the degree that was generally expected until then. These were bad news that clouded graphene's perceived future in creating composites with increased conductivity. 

CPI spin-out Primary Dispersions has formed a group that aims to commercialize specialist graphene based epoxy resins for the aerospace industry. Companies in the group include Bombardier, B/E Aerospace, NetComposites, The Institute of Occupational Medicine, and Nanoforce Technology.

The project will develop a top-down technique and synthesis platform which can efficiently and cost effectively produce graphene-reinforced epoxy resins on a scale that allows for market adoption, since as of now, there are no such techniques suitable for large-scale production of graphene based epoxy resins.

Directa Plus has announced the commercial launch of the Grafysorber Decontamination Unit, a graphene-based system for tackling environmental emergencies such as oil spills. The Company has also declared that Biocart, an Italian company engaged in the research, development and industrialization of next-gen materials and solutions for the mitigation of natural disasters and environmental remediation, has purchased the first three mobile units.

Directa Plus states that the launch follows successful industrial remediation activities conducted in Italy and Romania. The Grafysorber Decontamination Unit contains a proprietary plasma machine that is able to produce on site all the Grafysorber needed to clean up water contaminated with the harmful hydrocarbons contained in oil spills. As it is a mobile unit, it can be quickly deployed to the site of the spill. It is a sustainable product as it enables the recovery and recycling of the adsorbed oils; it is recyclable; and it does not contain any toxic substances. The ability to produce the graphene on site and in the right quantity renders it a very cost-effective solution compared with conventional solutions.

Researchers at Northwestern University have unveiled an intriguing new 2D material called borophene. It is a sheet of boron with a graphene-like honeycomb arrangement, but with an extra boron atom placed on top of each tessellated hexagon. Borophene has not yet been isolated as a free-standing sheet, but there are already indications that some of borophene’s properties could match, if not surpass, those of graphene and other 2D materials. 

The researchers grew borophene on silver, by evaporating boron atoms from a solid boron rod at temperatures of 450ºC to 700ºC inside an ultrahigh-vacuum chamber. While boron itself is a poor electrical conductor, the scientists found that borophene is actually fully metallic - which is extraordinary amongst other 2D materials (that are usually semiconductors). Unprotected samples oxidized in a few hours, but a silicon covering kept them stable for several weeks.

Applied Graphene Materials, producer of specialty graphene materials, has announced a share placing to raise £10.1 million to scale up its production facilities. AGM has conditionally raised £8.1 million (before expenses), through the placing of 4,628,571 New Ordinary Shares at 175p per share. It has also announced an Open Offer to raise up to £2m.

The company plans to ramp up production facilities to increase manufacturing capacity to six tonnes per year, and the funds will also be used to form collaborations and joint development activity with customers, including development of new intellectual property, fund the Group as it pursues production orders and finance the working capital requirements for at least twelve months.

Researchers involved in the €10.6 million European research project called GRAFOL have reportedly demonstrated a cost-effective roll-to-roll production tool capable of making large sheets of graphene on an industrial scale. The tool operates at atmospheric pressure and at reduced operating temperature, and is proclaimed by the researchers "the best route to low-cost manufacture".

Graphene-enhanced perovskite PV

The project team also believes that graphene could be used as a substitute for transparent indium tin oxide (ITO) electrodes used in organic LEDs (OLEDs), enabling flexible designs while helping reduce dependency on ITO. In addition, the team showed that it is possible to adapt the CVD method to grow graphene on 300 mm-diameter silicon wafers the standard size currently used in the semiconductor industry. That suggests the potential to integrate graphene in silicon photonics platforms, as well as flexible thin-film solar cells with transparent electrodes (like perovskite PVs, for example).

Researchers at Korea's ETRI (Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute) developed transparent graphene-based electrodes for OLED panels. The researchers say that these new electrodes improve the transparency and "image quality" of OLEDs by 40 to 60 percent, compared to current silver-based electrodes.

The researchers explain that current metal (mostly silver) based electrodes have a limited viewing angle because of their internal light reflection, and the external light reflection affects the image quality. Graphene electrodes are more transparent and reduce the reflectance by 40-60 percent.