British-based Dassi Bikes unveiled what they referred to as "the world’s first bike made with graphene" at their headquarters in Hampshire.

Dassi is currently focusing on a single road frame & TT frame design. The Dassi bike frame is said to contain 1% graphene throughout six layers underneath the carbon surface layer. The frame weighs just 750g and engineers predict that sub 400g frames could be achievable.

The EU-funded GOSFEL project (Graphene on Silicon Free Electron Laser), demonstrated a new type of compact laser source, which exploits graphene to create a solid-state free electron laser. Compact and low-cost lasers could benefit many indusries, like communications, security, sensors and more.

Free Electron Lasers (FELs) offer an alternative to conventional lasers being potentially the most efficient, high powered and flexible generators of tunable coherent radiation from the ultra-violet to the infrared. However, currently FELs are prohibitively large and expensive. The GOSFEL project used graphene to create a compact, relatively inexpensive, solid-state version of such a laser.

Researchers at Rice University have created rivet graphene, 2D carbon that incorporates carbon nanotubes for strength and carbon spheres that encase iron nanoparticles, which enhance both the material’s portability and its electronic properties.

Transferring graphene grown via CVD is usually done with a polymer layer to keep it from wrinkling or ripping, but the polymer tends to leave contaminants behind and degrade graphene’s abilities to carry a current. According to the Rice team, rivet graphene proved tough enough to eliminate the intermediate polymer step, and the rivets also make interfacing with electrodes far better compared with normal graphene’s interface, since the junctions are more electrically efficient. Finally, the nanotubes give the graphene an overall higher conductivity. So for using graphene in electronic devices, this is said to be an all-around superior material.

Researchers in the Amber materials science research center at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, have discovered a new behavior of graphene. They found that they can cause graphene to spontaneously assemble into ribbons and other shapes while lying on a surface. This could prove enough to make large graphene structures almost visible to the naked eye, and it operates in air at room temperature. The discovery was made almost accidentally while cutting graphene sheets, then realizing the techniques caused the graphene to spontaneously arrange itself.

In the short term, the researchers see their findings as potentially useful to pattern graphene sheets to simplify the production of electronic and other devices in larger volumes. However, they also think the self-assembly effect itself may be important as an active component of future sensors, actuators and machines.

Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) have developed a new type of packaging that uses a single layer of graphene to protect packaged goods from moisture. The newly developed material is capable of preventing water molecules from entering packaged products, like electronics and medicines.

For the development of the new material, the researchers synthesized a single layer of graphene via CVD, and used a simple and scalable process to convert the graphene to a polymer film. Water vapour permeated the material at a rate of less than 10-6gm per m² every day. The team conducted an accelerated aging test, which demonstrated that an organic photovoltaic device wrapped in the graphene-infused film would have a lifetime of more than a year. This was reported in contrast to goods packed in polymer without the graphene layer, which were said to offer a lifespan of just 30 minutes.

Cemtrex recently announced that it will set up a research pilot plant for the production of graphene while simultaneously sequestering carbon dioxide from flue gases at its Farmingdale facility. Cemtrex expects the research pilot plant to commence within six months.

The Company had already been involved in previous environmental project work, and now with growing global interest in the reduction of greenhouse gases, it plans to restart its research activities to strengthen its foothold within this sector. Initially, in the basic research the Company plans to evaluate certain new concepts to generate graphene nanoparticles while capturing Sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and carbon dioxide from flue gases.

Montreal-based graphene producer and developer Group NanoXplore recently announced some interesting and promising developments. We discuss the company's recent advances with the company's CEO and President, Dr. Soroush Nazarpour.

Hello Dr. Soroush. We know NanoXplore as a graphene producer but recently we hear that the company has been bringing graphene to the plastic industry. Why have you chosen to focus on this market?

NanoXplore is manufacturing graphene-enhanced polymers in response to the customer need for plastics with better electrical, thermal, and mechanical properties. Results from compounding NanoXplore’s graphene with Polyethylene, for example, have shown 10 orders of magnitude increase in electrical conductivity, 5 orders increase in thermal conductivity and a 30% increase in mechanical yield strength.

Researchers from the Israeli Technion University developed a novel and rapid method to optically visualize CNTs and graphene. The idea is that growing pNBA nanocrystals - which are optically visible on top of the CNTs or graphene sheets. This allows the crystals to be viewed by dark-field optical microscopy.

The pNBAs NCs can be easily removed - and the original material is not effected by this process. But it allows much easier study of graphene, and can also be used to aid production processes as it is a scalable, fast and cost-effective process. The video below shows how growing those NCs on carbon nanotubes makes the tubes visible.

Scientists at Manchester University are working towards developing a new graphene-coated aeroplane. They believe it will allow planes to fly higher, use less fuel and even protect them from lighting strikes. To test these ideas, the scientists have been working with aviation experts at Preston’s University of Central Lancashire and have create a drone-sized prototype.

The 3m wide unmanned aircraft, which is covered in graphene, will be shown off for the first time at Farnborough Air Show this weekend. Nicknamed Prospero, the aircraft will show off the remarkable properties of graphene - and potentially pave the way for it becoming commonly used in commercial aircraft.

Researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago have used rod-shaped bacteria - precisely aligned in an electric field, then vacuum-shrunk under a graphene sheet - to cause nanoscale ripples in the material, causing it to conduct electrons differently in perpendicular directions. The resulting material can be applied to a silicon chip and may led to various applications in electronics and nanotechnology.

The team explains that the current across the graphene wrinkles is less than the current along them; The key to formation of these wrinkles is graphene's extreme flexibility at the nanometer scale, which allows formation of carbon nanotubes. The wrinkle opens a 'V' in the electron cloud around each carbon atom, creating a dipole moment, which can open an electronic band gap that flat graphene does not have.