January 2020

Researchers from the University of Toronto have shown that graphene is highly resistant to fatigue and is able to withstand more than a billion cycles of high stress before it breaks.

The intrinsic strength of graphene has been measured at more than 100 gigapascals, among the highest values recorded for any material. But materials don't always fail because the load exceeds their maximum strength. Stresses that are small but repetitive can weaken materials by causing microscopic dislocations and fractures that slowly accumulate over time, a process known as fatigue.

Haydale Graphene Industries has reportedly lowered its expectations for this year after slow sales in the US and UK. Haydale has reduced overheads by £900,000 and closed its Taiwan operation though there will be a £410,000 revenue hit from this action in the second half.

US unit HCT has also seen disappointing demand for silicon carbide (SiC) whiskers and blends, while the new blanks production line started later than scheduled in November.

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and their colleagues have used graphene and STM technology to create and image a novel pair of quantum dots — tiny islands of confined electric charge that act like interacting artificial atoms. Such coupled quantum dots could serve as a robust quantum bit, or qubit, the fundamental unit of information for a quantum computer. Moreover, the patterns of electric charge in the island can’t be fully explained by current models of quantum physics, offering an opportunity to investigate rich new physical phenomena in materials.

a system of coupled quantum dots taken by STM shows electrons orbiting within two concentric sets of rings, separated by a gap. The inner set of rings represents one quantum dot; the outer, brighter set represents a larger, outer quantum dot. Credit: NIST

The NIST -led team included researchers from the University of Maryland NanoCenter and the National Institute for Materials Science in Japan. The team used the ultrasharp tip of a scanning tunneling microscope (STM) as if it were a stylus of sorts. Hovering the tip above an ultracold sheet of graphene, the researchers briefly increased the voltage of the tip.

A research team from the University of Göttingen, together with the Chemnitz University of Technology and the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt Braunschweig, has investigated the influence of the crystal on which graphene is grown, on the electrical resistance of the resulting material.

Contrary to previous assumptions, the new results show that the process known as the ‘proximity effect’ varies considerably at a nanometre scale. To determine the electrical resistance of graphene at the smallest scale possible, the physicists used a scanning tunneling microscope (STM).

Directa Plus has announced that it has received a grant for a project to develop an environmentally sustainable technology to digitally print its G+ graphene product on fabrics.

The GREEN.TEX project partners are Directa Plus, EFI Reggiani, the Italian subsidiary of global digital printing group Electronics For Imaging, Inc. (EFI), and IBS Consulting Group. The project will last for an initial period of 24 months and has a total value of around €1 million, of which Directa Plus will invest €240,000 and receive a grant of €100,000.

A team of researchers at the Rice University lab of chemist James Tour has designed a ‘Green’ process that produces pristine graphene in bulk using waste food, plastic and other materials. According to the team, this process can help facilitate a reduction of the environmental impact of concrete and other building materials.

The new process can turn bulk quantities of just about any carbon source into graphene flakes. The process is quick and cheap; Tour said the flash graphene technique can convert a ton of coal, food waste or plastic into graphene for a fraction of the cost used by other bulk graphene-producing methods.

XG Sciences recently announced the innovative use of XG Sciences’ graphene in Grays’ field hockey sticks. For over 160 years Grays of Cambridge has been on the forefront of creating superior sports equipment and has continued that path by strategically incorporating graphene into their GR hockey sticks to elevate player performance.

Adding graphene into our durable GX composite matrix enabled us to forge the GR Collection to deliver exceptional feel, power and playability, said James Bunday, Range Development Lead, Grays Hockey. The feedback we received after launching the GR Collection was tremendous because the graphene-enhanced technology strengthens the hockey sticks and helps players reach great all-around performance.

Researchers at the India-based Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute (CMERI) are developing an economical graphene-based supercapacitor that can present an effective alternative to providing energy to various applications, including state-of-the-art military equipment, mobile devices and modern vehicles.

Graphene has been used in the newly developed ultra-capacitors to replace the expensive activated carbon, and the switch seems to have also reduced the supercapacitors' weight and cost by ten times.

First Graphene (FGR) has provided an update of the work on the Vortex Fluidic Device (VFD) technology. First Graphene and its subsidiary 2D Fluidics are developing a more benign processing route using the Vortex Fluidic device for oxidized graphene and recently successfully transferred the technology to First Graphene’s laboratories at the Graphene Engineering and Innovation Centre in Manchester.

Work has been underway on the Vortex Fluidic device at First Graphene’s Manchester facilities, with the technology undergoing further development and optimization to identify, understand and resolve future upscaling issues.

Skeleton Technologies, European developer of graphene-based supercapacitors announced that it has signed a large-scale contract with Medcom to deploy its supercapacitors for Warsaw's Tram network.

Skeletons supercapacitor systems are situated onboard trams and provide energy savings by recuperating braking energy and reusing it for acceleration - and significantly decreasing the total energy consumption significantly. The system also protects the grid infrastructure as it shaves power peaks.