October 2017

Versarien has announced a collaboration with Israel Aerospace Industries in order to develop and test its graphene technology in aerospace composite structures.

According to Versarien, IAI had agreed to buy its Nanene few-layer graphene nano-platelets technology. IAI, a defense and aerospace company, will incorporate it into composite panels for testing and evaluation with the potential to develop it commercially.

Researchers at Chalmers University have developed a flexible detector for terahertz frequencies (1000 gigahertz) using graphene transistors on plastic substrates. It is said to be the first of its kind, and can extend the use of terahertz technology to applications that require flexible electronics, like wireless sensor networks and wearable technology.

At room temperature, the translucent and flexible device detects signals in the frequency range 330 to 500 gigahertz. The technique can be used for imaging in the terahertz area (THz camera), but also for identifying different substances (sensor). It may also be of potential benefit in health care, where terahertz waves can be used to detect cancer. Other areas where the detector could be used are imaging sensors for vehicles or for wireless communications.

FLAG-ERA, a body that gathers regional and national funding organizations (NRFOs) in Europe with the goal of supporting the Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) Flagship concept (more specifically, the FET Flagship initiatives Graphene and Human Brain Project (HBP)), has announced the outcome of its call for projects in synergy with the Graphene Flagship and the Human Brain Project (FLAG-ERA JTC 2017).

Relating to the Graphene Flagship, in total 17 basic and applied research projects have been recommended for funding to the national research funding organizations by the FLAG-ERA JTC 2017 Call Steering Committee. The actual funding of the projects depends on the successful completion of the final funding decisions and contract negotiations at the national level. Once approved, the 17 recommended projects are expected to become partnering projects of the Graphene Flagship and to start between December 2017 and March 2018. Click here for the full projects list.

UK's Haydale and Australia-based Imagine Intelligent Materials have signed a strategic agreement to establish a graphene-based conductive coatings capability in North America. According to the agreement, Haydale is to acquire exclusive license to Imagine IM’s Plant In A Box graphene processing technology and establish US supply chain for graphene-based conductive coatings that are designed for the global geosynthetics market. Haydale will also import inventory of imgne X3 to support planned field trials and early adopter orders.

The companies state that the signing of a Letter of Intent (LOI) between them marks the first step in establishing a strategic collaboration. In parallel, Haydale has issued a Purchase Order to Imagine IM for a quantity of Imgne X3 that will be sufficient to enable 50,000m2 of conductive geotextile to be manufactured. This will ensure that there is available supply in the US ahead of the commissioning of a full-scale plant at Haydale’s manufacturing facility in Greer, SC.

Researchers in the UK (the University of Manchester) and Italy (the University of Pisa) have developed an inkjet-printed graphene strain gauge sensor on paper. The device is said to have a gauge factor of up to 125 even when very small strains are applied, and its overall sensitivity and performance can be tuned by different printing parameters, such as drop-spacing and number of printing passes. It might be used in applications like robot skin and health monitoring applications, and in smart packaging.

The team made their strain gauge by depositing conductive lines made from a network of graphene flakes (dispersed in water as the solvent) on a PEL P60 paper substrate using a simple Dimatix DMP-2850 inkjet printer. This printer can create and define patterns over an area of about 200 mm x 300 mm and handle substrates that are up to 25 mm thick. A waveform editor and a drop-watch camera system were used to manipulate electronic pulses to the jetting deice for optimizing the drops’ characteristics as they were ejected from the nozzle.

Researchers at the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) are developing a water treatment system based on a mix of graphene oxide and a byproduct made from shrimp shells.

The ERDC team’s breakthrough was the ability to scale the membranes from the inch and a half diameter membranes other labs throughout the world are working on, to sheets stretching up to two feet long with the potential of making them as big as needed.

A common challenge when attempting to make a graphene-based sensor is the high levels of electronic noise that are caused, reducing its effectiveness. In a recent work, an international team of researchers proposed a graphene-based semiconductor device that reduces electronic noise when its electric charge is neutral (referred to as its neutrality point). The group achieved this neutrality point without the need for bulky magnetic equipment that had previously prevented these approaches from being used in portable sensor applications.

In a proof-of-concept device, the researchers used their new sensing scheme to detect HIV-related DNA hybridization at picomolar concentrations. The team fabricated a charge detector out of graphene that can detect very small amounts of charges close to its surface. The sensing principle of the device relies on charge species detection through the field-effect, which brings about a change in electrical conductance of graphene upon adsorption of a charged molecule on the sensor surface.

OLED displays are very sensitive to oxygen and moisture, and the need to protect the displays is one of the major challenges of this next-generation display technology. First generation OLED displays were protected with a glass barrier, but glass is not easily flexible and so cannot be used in flexible OLEDs. Flexible OLEDs are today encapsulation with a thin-film encapsulation layer made from both organic and in-organic materials, and companies are searching for better OLED encapsulation technologies.

Graphene is the world's most impermeable material, and so the idea of using graphene as a barrier layer for OLED has been around for a while. In 2015 the UK launched a collaboration project called Gravia to develop graphene-based encapsulation, and the project's team has now reported their results.

The University of Mississippi has established a new center to advance translational science and engineering of graphene-based technologies. The Center for Graphene Research and Innovation will focus on bridging the gap between university-based science and discovery and industry-led innovations and applications for graphene.

The center will partner with a number of public and private entities, including the National Graphene Association (NGA), which will assist the center by promoting its research achievements and helping to develop relationships between the center and other graphene-focused businesses and researchers worldwide.

Researchers at the University of Sussex have developed a new way to make smartphone touch screens that are cheaper, less brittle, and more environmentally friendly, using graphene. In addition, the new approach is also said to yield devices that use less energy and are more responsive.

The problem that the team set out to solve was that indium tin oxide, which is currently used to make smartphone screens, is brittle and expensive. The primary constituent, indium, is also a rare metal and is ecologically damaging to extract. Silver, which has been shown to be the best alternative to indium tin oxide, is also expensive. The potential solution by the University of Sussex is to combine silver nanowires with graphene, to create a new hybrid material that matches the performance of the existing technologies at a reduced cost.