Associate professor of engineering at Texas State University,Dr. Maggie Chen, has been researching and studying durable, flexible electronic circuits in hopes of creating new antennas for NASA space travel programs. Chen’s work is expected to eventually replace the common use of silver materials in antennas. Ideally, Chen’s 3D-printed antennas would use graphene.

With the antennas, our goal is to reduce the volume and weight of the antennas and to provide and implement a more efficient approach to the use of antennas in space, Chen said. The idea is we roll the antennas up, launch a satellite into space and pop them back out when in space so they can communicate with the stations on the ground.

Global Graphene Group (G3) has announced the signing of a joint development agreement (JDA) with a major Taiwan-based manufacturer. The companies will work together to incorporate graphene-enhanced materials into polyetheretherketone (PEEK)-based products for the semiconductor industry in portions of Asia.

PEEK is a high-performance engineering thermoplastic. The addition of G3’s graphene will improve the thermoplastic’s mechanical, electrical and thermal properties. As an excellent self-lubrication material, graphene can help lower the friction ratio of PEEK/Graphene devices and reduce its wear rate significantly. It can also improve its anti-corrosion properties against harsh environments by creating a barrier to the polymer matrix.

Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences have fabricated a graphene-based transistor with a Schottky emitter - a silicon-graphene-germanium transistor. Using a semiconductor membrane and graphene transfer, the team stacked three materials including an n-type top single-crystal Si membrane, a middle single-layer graphene (Gr) and an n-type bottom Ge substrate.

Device design and fabrication. Image credit: Nature Communications

The team explained that compared with previous tunnel emitters, the on-current of the Si-Gr Schottky emitter shows the maximum on-current and the smallest capacitance, leading to a delay time more than 1,000 times shorter. Thus, the alpha cut-off frequency of the transistor is expected to increase from about 1 MHz by using the previous tunnel emitters to above 1 GHz by using the current Schottky emitter. THz operation is expected using a compact model of an ideal device.

New research by scientists at the University of Illinois combines atomic-scale experimentation with computer modeling to determine how much energy it would take in order to bend multilayer graphene - a question that has eluded scientists since graphene was first isolated.

"The bending stiffness of a material is one of its most fundamental mechanical properties," said Edmund Han, a materials science and engineering graduate student and study co-author. "Even though we have been studying graphene for two decades, we have yet to resolve this very fundamental property. The reason is that different research groups have come up with different answers that span across orders of magnitude."

A Rutgers University-led team has created what it is calling a "better biosensor technology that may help lead to safe stem cell therapies for treating Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases and other neurological disorders".

The development, which is based on a graphene and gold platform and high-tech imaging system, monitors the progress of stem cells by detecting genetic material (RNA) involved in turning such cells into brain cells (neurons).

A team of researchers at the Institute of Basic Science in Korea recently released the results of a study that indicates stress stimulates further reactions in graphene and may actually be beneficial for its functionality.

The team found that the crystal structure of copper substrates, which are usually used for graphene synthesis, affects the addition of functionalities to graphene. Using different crystal structures such as ‘Copper 001′, ‘Copper 110′ and ‘Copper 111′ as substrates, the additional reactions of the graphene’s functions were observed and the reaction was found to be the fastest and most uniform on copper 111 substrates.

Directa Plus announced the start of a trial of re-surfacing a section of a UK road in Curbridge, Oxfordshire with materials containing its G+ graphene substance. The trial will be in collaboration with Skanska, the leading Sweden-based project development and construction group. Directa Plus partnered with Iterchimica, an Italy-based leader in products that enhance asphalt performance, to carry out the trial.

For the trial, the companies will refurbish the two upper layers of a 750m-long section of road, comparing asphalt concrete containing the graphene super modifier. New technologies such as the super modifier had the potential to vastly improve the quality of road surfaces throughout Europe and the wider world, according to Directa Plus.

Talga Resources, advanced battery anode materials and graphene additives provider, has announced a commercial-scale trial of a graphene-enhanced coating applied to a 33,000 tonne container ship.

The 33,000 tonne 225m long cargo ship Algarrobo leaves dry dock after re-painting a 700m2 section with Talphene-enhanced primer coating

The 700m² coating of the cargo vessel’s hull is part of advanced testing of Talga’s functionalized graphene (Talphene) additive as a performance booster for existing commercial marine coatings.

NanoGraphene has teamed up with Solar Quartz to develop graphene-enhanced solar industry products and new applications. The two companies aim to enhance the generating potential of solar panels to above 40%.

The partners plan to utilize their extensive experience and knowledge of high purity quartz and solar-grade silicon production industries together to develop new graphene-enhanced solar grade materials, applications and products with remarkable new attributes.

An international team of researchers from Spain, the U.S., China and Japan has found that superconductivity in bilayer graphene can be turned on or off with a small voltage change, increasing its usefulness for electronic devices. This follows previous findings regarding twisted bilayer graphene and its ability to exhibit alternating superconducting and insulating regions.

"It's kind of a holy grail of physics to create a material that has superconductivity at room temperature," University of Texas at Austin physicist Allan MacDonald said. "So that's part of the motivation of this work: to understand high-temperature superconductivity better."