October 2020

Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory have found a possible way to evaluate the effectiveness of graphene-based protective barriers.

It’s about creating and using extra-corrosive air and observing its accelerated effect on the graphene-protected materials. Simply by imparting oxygen gas molecules with a slight kinetic energy, we could extract information about decades-worth of corrosion in a minute, said Hisato Yamaguchi, a lead Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist for this research. We create a portion of air artificially, including oxygen with a physics-defined energy distribution, and expose that to graphene-protected metals.

Rice University's process to produce pristine graphene in bulk from waste (dubbed flash graphene) was recently modified for recycling plastic. Instead of raising the temperature of a carbon source with direct current, as in the original process, the lab first exposes plastic waste to around eight seconds of high-intensity alternating current, followed by the DC jolt.

Post-consumer plastic received from a recycler is then mixed with carbon black and processed into turbostratic graphene via timed pulses of AC and DC electricity. Image by the Tour Group

The products are high-quality turbostratic graphene, a valuable and soluble substance that can be used to enhance electronics, composites, concrete and other materials, and carbon oligomers, molecules that can be vented away from the graphene for use in other applications.

Haydale announced its financial results for FY2020 (which endd on 30 June, 2020). The group's revenues reached £2.95 million, down from £3.47 in FY 2019, but its net loss decreased to £4.02 million (down from £7.19 in 2019) as the company continues to implement cost savings measures.

Haydale's negative cash flow deceased by 31%, but the company still used up £3.32 million in the year and at the end of June had only £0.82 million in cash and equivalents. On September 2020 Haydale raised £2.98 million via a new share subscription.

Australian Advanced Materials has announced it is developing a graphene-oxide-based ink battery that is able to self-charge within minutes.

The cells will be created with a printable ink and designed to generate electricity from humidity in the air or skin surface to self-charge without any manual charging or wired power required. It was said the batteries will be ideally suited for use in Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

An international team of researchers recently reported its success in creating a new type of graphene-based photodetector.

The team integrated three concepts to achieve the new device: metallic plasmonic antennas, ultra sub-wavelength waveguiding of light and graphene photodetection. Specifically, the 2D-material hexagonal boron nitride was used as the waveguide for hyperbolic phonon polaritons, which can highly confine and guide mid-infrared light at the nanoscale. By carefully matching the nano-antenna with the phonon polariton waveguide, they efficiently funnel incoming light into a nanoscale graphene junction. By using this approach, they were able to overcome intrinsic limitations of graphene, such as its low absorption and its small photoactive region near the junction.

Update: the MSI RTX 3000 graphene-enhanced GPUs are now shipping

MSI, a global computer hardware manufacturer, has revealed that it is utilizing graphene composites in its RTX 3000 series GPUs.

It seems that the graphene composite parts are replacing the backplate, traditionally made of plastic, and provide greater heat dissipation performance and better stiffness to handle the weight of the entire card while still weighing less than plastics.

Grafoid and Stria Lithium have announced a reverse takeover which will result in Grafoid becoming a wholly-owned subsidiary of Stria Lithium (it is not clear but the agreement could result in the combination of the two enterprises).

Grafoid says that the new enterprise will get a new name, which will be agreed upon soon. The new company's board of directors will consist of 10 directors, out of which 6 will be nominated by Grafoid (which means that Grafoid will actually control the new company).

Italy-based Directa Plus recently signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding with NexTech Batteries, a company active in the field of lithium sulphur batteries based in Nevada, US.

Under the terms of the agreement, Directa would supply its G+ graphene nanoplatelets to Nextech Batteries.

An interdisciplinary team of researchers from The University of Manchester have developed a new graphene-based testing system for disease-related antibodies, initially targeting a kidney disease called Membranous Nephropathy.

The new instrument, based on the principle of a quartz-crystal microbalance (QCM) combined with a graphene-based bio-interface, is said to offer a cheap, fast, simple and sensitive alternative to currently available antibody tests.

In December 2018, Manchester University’s Graphene Engineering Innovation Center (GEIC) first opened, aiming to accelerate the commercial impact of graphene and help realize its potential to revolutionize many sectors.

James Baker, the CEO at Graphene@Manchester (G@M) who's responsible for the development and delivery of the business strategy which includes the National Graphene Institute (NGI) and the GEIC, kindly agreed to answer a few questions we had and update us on the latest from the GEIC.