February 2021

An international research team, led by the University at Buffalo, has reported an advancement that could help give graphene magnetic properties. The researchers describe in their work how they paired a magnet with graphene, and induced what they describe as artificial magnetic texture in the nonmagnetic material.

The image shows eight electrodes around a 20-nanometer-thick magnet (white rectangle) and graphene (white dotted line). Credit: University at Buffalo.

Independent of each other, graphene and spintronics each possess incredible potential to fundamentally change many aspects of business and society. But if you can blend the two together, the synergistic effects are likely to be something this world hasn’t yet seen, says lead author Nargess Arabchigavkani, who performed the research as a PhD candidate at UB and is now a postdoctoral research associate at SUNY Polytechnic Institute.

Vaulta is an Australia-based startup that focuses on graphene-enhanced battery casings. Vaulta's director, Dominic Spooner, had a chat with the Graphene-Info team to help shed some light on this fascinating young company, it's technology and plans for the future.

Dominic has over 12 years’ experience as a design engineer and has worked in a wide range of industries including renewables and batteries, defense and aerospace, consumer products, commercial products and startups. He reveals that the idea for Vaulta came to him after working directly in the field of battery design and seeing an opportunity for growth that was largely being overlooked in favor of continuing with the status quo of battery module design. Dominic founded Ember Design House in 2017 undertaking general product from R&D to production and in 2019, he founded Vaulta to focus fully on the battery casing industry and turn his product ideas into reality.

Scientists at EPFL have developed an energy-efficient graphene-based carbon dioxide filter that can extract carbon dioxide out of a gas mix, to then be either stored or converted into useful chemicals.

Professor Kumar Varoon Agrawal at EPFL's School of Basic Sciences (EPFL Valais Wallis) has led a team of chemical engineers to develop the world's thinnest filter from graphene. "Our approach was simple," says Agrawal. "We made carbon dioxide-sized holes in graphene, which allowed carbon dioxide to flow through while blocking other gases such as nitrogen, which are larger than carbon dioxide." The result is a record-high carbon dioxide-capture performance.

Gnanomat recently announced the launch of its new commercially-available graphene-based nanocomposite.

Graphene Silver nanocomposite, a product supplied as a dry powder, is made of pristine graphene coated with silver nanoparticles. This type of material has been shown to have great potential in scientific literature, in applications such as inks on textiles for highly conductive wearable electronics, electrochemical sensors, catalyst, antibacterial activity and detection of heavy metal ions.

A collaborative team of Graphene Flagship partners from DTU, Denmark, IIT, Italy, Aalto University, Finland, AIXTRON, UK, imec, Belgium, Graphenea, Spain, Warsaw University, Poland, and Thales R&T, France, as well as collaborators in China, Korea and the US, has come together to develop and mature terahertz spectroscopy techniques, that can penetrate graphene films and enable the creation of detailed maps of their electrical quality, without damaging or contaminating the material. The result of this collaborating is a novel measurement tool for graphene characterization.

Graphene is often ‘sandwiched’ between many different layers and materials to be used in electronic and photonic devices, which complicates the process of quality assessment. Terahertz spectroscopy can help by imaging the encapsulated materials and revealing the quality of the graphene underneath, exposing imperfections at critical points in the fabrication process. It is a fast, non-destructive technology that probes the electrical properties of graphene and layered materials, with no need for direct contact.

Haydale has announces its financial results for H1 FY2021 (which ended on December 2020 - revenues were £1.28 million, down 5% from last year, while operating loss was reduced by 34%. At the end of December 2020, Haydale had £1.88 in cash and equivalents.

Haydale says that even though the covid-19 pandemic impacted several of its key markets, the company observed greater interest from existing and new customers. The company anticipates that full FY2021 revenue will be in line with FY2020, while lower operating costs will lead to a reduced operating loss.

Qurv Technologies, a Spain-based startup developing wide-spectrum image sensors based on graphene and quantum-dot technologies, has won the Imaging Sensors Technology Showcase at the Technology Unites Global Summit.

The Qurv wide-spectrum image sensor was recognized as the best imaging technology. The selection of winners (Infineon Technologies also won an award for its environmental sensor as the leading MEMS technology) was made from five finalists in each category in a vote by a committee of industry experts.

Directa Plus progressed its partnership with U.S-based Lithium Sulphur batteries company NexTech Batteries by signing a 3-year Supply and Strategic R&D agreement for developing next-generation batteries for green mobility, grid storage, aviation and consumer products.

The Supply Agreement, based on a worldwide bilateral exclusivity in the lithium battery field, has an initial duration of three years, with an option to be extended for two years longer. The R&D Agreement, also with a duration of three years, provides for Joint Lab activities with the intention of developing new specific grades of G+ graphene nanoplatelets. Both parties will dedicate selected scientists from their R&D teams and part of their respective facilities to the enterprise.

Researchers from DGIST have developed a graphene-based method to keep living, wet cells viable in an ultra-high-vacuum environment, allowing an accurate high-resolution visualization of the undistorted molecular structure and distribution of lipids in cell membranes. This approach could enhance existing bioimaging abilities, thus improving the understanding of mechanisms underlying complex diseases such as cancers and Alzheimer’s.

Nanoimaging is used to structurally characterize subcellular components and cellular molecules such as cholesterol and fatty acids. But it is not perfect, as Professor Dae Won Moon of Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Technology (DGIST), Korea, lead scientist in a recent groundbreaking study advancing the field, explains: Most advanced nanoimaging techniques use accelerated electron or ion beams in ultra-high-vacuum environments. To introduce cells into such an environment, one must chemically fix and physically freeze or dry them. But such processes deteriorate the cells’ original molecular composition and distribution.

ICFO researchers led by Professor Frank Koppens, in collaboration with researchers from Universita di Pisa, CNIT, Ghent University-IMEC, and NIMS, have reported a novel electro-absorption (EA) modulator capable of showing a 3-fold increase in static and dynamic modulation efficiency while maintaining the high-speed, a value that surpasses those for previously reported graphene EA modulators.

To achieve this, the team of researchers developed a high-quality graphene-based electro-absorption modulator by combining high-quality graphene and a high-k dielectric, also used in microelectronics. The high quality of the graphene was achieved by integrating it with the 2d-material dielectric hexagonal boron nitride (hBN).