GrapheneCA, graphene producer and developer of graphene-based technology for industries and consumers, has announced that it has signed a memorandum of understanding with Apis Cor to develop a 3D printing system capable of printing graphene materials.

GrapheneCA and its partner Apis Cor, a developer of specialized concrete 3D printing equipment, are discussing a future co-operation in which GrapheneCA will design an extruder and mixing system that can be embedded into Apis Cor’s 3D printer. Together, the two companies are expecting to develop a 3D printing system capable of printing graphene material.

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have designed a graphene device that switches from a superconducting material to an insulator and back again to a superconductor — all with a flip of a switch. The team shared that the device exhibits this unique versatility while being thinner than a human hair.

Views of the trilayer graphene/boron nitride heterostructure device as seen through an optical microscope. The gold, nanofabricated electric contacts are shown in yellow; the silicon dioxide/silicon substrate is shown in brown and the boron nitride flakes

"Usually, when someone wants to study how electrons interact with each other in a superconducting quantum phase versus an insulating phase, they would need to look at different materials. With our system, you can study both the superconductivity phase and the insulating phase in one place," said Guorui Chen, the study's lead author and a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Feng Wang, who led the study. Wang, a faculty scientist in Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division, is also a UC Berkeley physics professor.

First Graphene (FGR) recently announced that is now shipping its PureGRAPH product, having received formal approvals from both NICNAS and REACH earlier in 2019. Product sales have been shipped from the Henderson facility to clients in Ireland, the UK and Germany for product development programmes.

In addition, FGR stated that research work undertaken by a number of institutions has identified that the addition of graphene to polyurethane elastomers provides very useful fire retardancy qualities. This is in addition to other well-known benefits that come with the addition of graphene. Most of this work is understood to be at bench scale in laboratories.

Today we published new versions of all our graphene market reports. Graphene-Info provides comprehensive niche graphene market reports, and our reports cover everything you need to know about these niche markets. The reports are now updated to July 2019.

The Graphene Batteries Market Report:

• The advantages using graphene batteries
• The different ways graphene can be used in batteries
• Various types of graphene materials
• What's on the market today
• Detailed specifications of some graphene-enhanced anode material
• Personal contact details into most graphene developers

The report package provides a good introduction to the graphene battery - present and future. It includes a list of all graphene companies involved with batteries and gives detailed specifications of some graphene-enhanced anode materials and contact details into most graphene developers. Read more here!

UK-based graphene technology company Paragraf has announced the close of its £12.8 million (over $16 million USD ) Series A round led by Parkwalk. The round also included investment from IQ Capital Partners, Amadeus Capital Partners and Cambridge Enterprise, the commercialization arm of the University of Cambridge, as well as several angel investors. The funding will aim to see Paragraf’s first graphene-based electronics products reach the market, transitioning the company into a commercial, revenue-generating entity.

Paragraf sets out to deliver IP-protected graphene technology using standard, mass production scale manufacturing approaches, enabling step-change performance enhancements to today’s electronic devices. The company’s first sensor products have reportedly demonstrated order of magnitude operational improvements over today’s incumbents. Achieving large-scale, graphene-based production technology may enable next generation electronics, including vastly increased computing speeds, significantly improved medical diagnostics and higher efficiency renewable energy generation as well as currently unachievable products such as instant charging batteries and very low power, flexible electronics.

Versarien, UK-based advanced materials engineering group, has announced that it has secured its first graphene orders from the North American corporate research and development center of a Japanese headquartered company. This customer was described as a global automotive components company that has operations in over 40 countries, employing in excess of 250,000 people.

After initial graphene quality testing trials, the Customer has placed development orders for 1kg each of Versarien's high purity graphene nano platelets ("GNP-HP") and Nanene. The Customer's principle operations focus on leading-edge automotive materials and process development, and the development of next-generation, vehicle-related, information and communications technology.

Haydale has announced that its graphene-enhanced prepreg has been incorporated in the composite tooling and automotive body panels in the new BAC Mono R, which made its debut at Goodwood Festival of Speed.

Briggs Automotive Company (BAC), working alongside both Haydale and Pentaxia, built the light-weight BAC Mono R body using Haydale’s graphene-enhanced carbon composite materials, in work that started back in 2016. In October 2018, Haydale announced that it has been awarded a research and development grant from the Niche Vehicle Network to develop graphene-enhanced composite tooling and graphene-enhanced automotive body panels.

Highways England, a government responsible for motorways and major A roads, has partnered with the Graphene Engineering Innovation Center (GEIC), in order to use graphene to address challenges experienced by the road network in England, such as the deterioration of surfaces. Highways England believes adding graphene into maintenance and renewals operations has the potential to extend asset life and make the network perform at an industry changing level.

The partnership will explore the operational and road user benefit of incorporating graphene into assets such as road surfacing and road markings, as well as help to drive the development of a low carbon and digital road network.

Applied Graphene Materials recently announced it has achieved significant technological progress (patent pending) on the deployment of graphene into water-based coatings to enhance their barrier properties. This water-based breakthrough is based on AGM's platform Genable technology, a range of master dispersions that are designed to facilitate the easy incorporation of graphene into coating formulations and existing processes.

Applied Graphene Materials also announced that UK-based Alltimes Coatings, a leading specialist in the supply and application of protective coatings for buildings, is launching its new Advantage Graphene liquid coating roofing system, with significantly enhanced anti-corrosion performance delivered by the incorporation of AGM's graphene.

Researchers at the U.S-based University of Rochester, along with colleagues at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, have designed a way to produce graphene materials using a novel technique: mixing oxidized graphite with bacteria. Their method is reportedly a more cost-efficient, time-saving, and environmentally friendly way of producing graphene materials versus those produced chemically, and could lead to the creation of innovative computer technologies and medical equipment.

From left to right:graphite (Gr), graphene oxide (GO), microbially‐reduced graphene oxide (mrGO), and chemically‐reduced graphene oxide (crGO)

"For real applications you need large amounts," says Anne S. Meyer, an associate professor of biology at the University of Rochester. "Producing these bulk amounts is challenging and typically results in graphene that is thicker and less pure. This is where our work came in". In order to produce larger quantities of graphene materials, Meyer and her colleagues started with a vial of graphite. They exfoliated the graphite-shedding the layers of material-to produce graphene oxide (GO), which they then mixed with the bacteria Shewanella. They let the beaker of bacteria and precursor materials sit overnight, during which time the bacteria reduced the GO to a graphene material.