Sweden-based Graphematech, a startup company that develops and sells novel graphene-based nanocomposite materials and services, has announced the development of a scalable method for coating polymer powder and granular with a layer of its Aros Graphene. The Company sees this is a major boost to the polymer composites industry.

This newly developed method is said to be very efficient for obtaining high quality dispersion of Aros Graphene additive inside a polymer matrix without the use of high shear forces in melt mixing. It enormously reduces production costs and minimizes property degradation for both the polymer matrix and the additive while maintaining high quality and homogeneous composite. The invented method can be also applied for coating polymer powder with different materials such as metals, ceramics, fibers, cellulose and more.

Applied Graphene Materials (AGM) recently announced the launch of two new series within its Genable platform dispersion technology range. The Genable 1000 series, meant to significantly enhance and reduce the content of existing anti-corrosion additives, and the Genable 2000 series, developed to deliver excellent anti-corrosion performance specifically on aluminium substrates.

AGM states that once formulated optimally into anti-corrosion coating systems, Genable dispersions have demonstrated substantial performance gains, providing extensions in coating lifetime of over 3 times under cyclic salt spray testing (ASTM G-85-94 Prohesion). Early adopters are reportedly already successfully applying these materials in real-world applications.

Directa Plus, a leading producer and supplier of graphene-based products for use in consumer and industrial markets, has announced the successful completion of industrial field testing of Grafysorber at an oil treatment plant of OMV Petrom, a leading Romanian integrated oil and gas company and one of the largest in Southern Europe.

The tests reportedly demonstrated that the deployment of Grafysorber improved the quality of water used for the injection process. The parties will work together on the second phase of trials to expand the tests to treat a further contaminant.

Mr. Xu Jiang, president and general manager of China’s XFNano, was kind enough to answer a few questions we had for him regarding XFNano’s graphene materials, technology and business. Mr. Jiang founded XFNano in 2009, and he holds a master’s degree from Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications.

Q: Hello Mr. Jiang, thank you for your time. Can you update us on your graphene production process and facilities?

In 2016, XFNANO put its new production line into operation, which yields an annual production capacity of 50 tons of high-quality graphene powder and 1,000 tons of graphene dispersion. We believe this can meet our customers’ demands for large quantities.

A team of Indian scientists has developed a graphene-based nano-material drawn from seaweed for effective treatment of toxic wastewater without using any chemicals.

Membrane-based filtration processes are generally used to treat industrial wastewater but can’t usually fully filter out heavy metal contaminants. In order to address this problem, processes that use activated carbon, graphene or carbon nano tubes are being developed as carbon-based processes can help remove dyes and heavy metals through adsorption. Researchers at the Central Salt and Marine Chemicals Research Institute, Bhavnagar, have developed a 'green' process by using seaweed as starting material. They have synthesized a graphene-iron sulfide nanocomposite from an abundant seaweed - Ulva fasciata through direct pyrolysis technique.

UPDATE: In March 2019, Surwon commented that the street-legal version of its graphene-enhanced tire would be prohibitively-expensive if it and its partner were to produce a finished version using the current rubber compound’s configuration. It appears that while Surwon sees potential for the tires, it may still be a ways to go before launching and arriving at competitive pricing. In April 2019, Surwon decided to discontinue its efforts to make a commercially-available graphene-enhanced road-legal tire.

Surwon Technology, a Hong Kong based materials developer, is reportedly conducting extensive testing on a wet weather tire that is reportedly capable of delivering significant performance improvements over the current "wets" used by racers during rainy periods on Grand Prix weekends.

A research team led by the National University of Singapore (NUS) and conducted in collaboration with Fudan University has developed an economical and industrially viable strategy to produce graphene. The new technique may offer a way for efficient large-scale production of graphene, to pave the way for sustainable synthesis of the material.

The conventional method of producing graphene utilizes sound energy or shearing forces to exfoliate graphene layers from graphite, and then dispersing the layers in large amounts of organic solvent. As insufficient solvent causes the graphene layers to reattach themselves back into graphite, yielding one kilogram of graphene currently requires at least one tonne of organic solvent, making the method costly and environmentally unfriendly.

Nanotech Energy has announced raising more than $3 million in investment funding. The R&D company was launched in August 2014 by physician-entrepreneur Dr. Jack Kavanaugh.

Nanotech Energy is a U.S-based supplier of graphene and graphene oxide materials and inks, and is developing graphene-enhanced batteries and microscopic supercapacitors for smartphones and biomedical devices.

A research team from Japan has developed an integrated, high-speed and on-chip blackbody emitter based on graphene. The team reports that the device operated in NIR region including telecommunication wavelengths. A fast response time of ~ 100 ps, which is ~ 105 higher than the previous graphene emitters, has been experimentally demonstrated for single and few-layer graphene, the emission responses can be controlled by the graphene contact with the substrate depending on the number of graphene layers.

The team stated that graphene light emitters are greatly advantageous over conventional compound semiconductor emitters because they can be integrated on silicon chips due to simple fabrication processes of graphene emitters and direct coupling with silicon waveguide through an evanescent field. Because graphene can realize high-speed, small footprint and on-Si-chip light emitters, which are still challenges for compound semiconductors, the graphene-based light emitters can open new routes to highly integrated optoelectronics and silicon photonics.

Researchers from Kyoto University and Osaka University report for the successful synthesis of helical nanographene. These graphene constructs previously existed only in theory, so successful synthesis may offer applications like nanoscale induction coils and molecular springs for use in nanomechanics.

"We processed some basic chemical compounds through step-by-step reactions, such as McMurry coupling, followed by stepwise photocyclodehydrogenation and aromatization," explains first author Yusuke Nakakuki. "We then found that we had synthesized the foundational backbone of helical graphene."