Silca, producer of bicycle accessories, has launched a graphene-based chain lubricant, Hot Wax X. Silca claims it ‘runs roughly 0.5 watts faster’ than their original Secret Chain Blend hot-melt wax, and that it can extend the chain life to 30,000km. The new lubricant comes at quite a high price of £220 per 300g tin. 

Silca previously made waves with its Secret Blend Hot Chain Wax, which gained the reputation of 'the fastest lubricant in the world'. Now, Silca found Nanene (by Versarien, which owns the Nanene brand), a commercial type of graphene, to further improve its product.

Researchers from China's Tsinghua University have constructed highly aligned graphene oxide (GO) nanochannels for sustainable energy production using a freeze-casting process. The new method could address an issue that impedes the generation of electricity from natural water flow through engineered nanochannels, which could become a viable way to cater to the fast-growing renewable power needs.

Large-scale nanochannel integration and the multi-parameter coupling restrictive influence on electric generation currently remain big challenges for macroscale applications, but this novel design encourages spontaneous absorption and directed transfer of water within the nanochannels to generate clean electricity.

Skoltech researchers have patented a method that enables producing arbitrarily shaped functional graphene components on a transparent substrate with 100-nanometer resolution, which could be especially suited for flexible and transparent electronics. The new approach reportedly helps avoid defects that arise during graphene transfer between substrates and strongly affect the material’s quality.

“Flexible and transparent electronics is typically associated with wearable biosensors that monitor vital signs, such as heart rate, breathing, and blood oxygenation, and relay them to a smartphone or fitness band,” Skoltech PhD student Aleksei Shiverskii, one of the inventors, said. “An affordable and efficient technology that at first may seem impractical soon becomes a ubiquitous and indispensable appliance, like a bluetooth electric kettle or a wifi vacuum cleaner. I believe that someday flexible and transparent electronics will become a fixture, too.”

Black Swan Graphene has announced it has launched a scoping study to evaluate the feasibility of a larger production scale of graphene products, in partnership with engineering firm Halyard Inc.

The large-scale production engineering study will provide an initial evaluation of the project, including processing plant specifications as well as mechanical, civil, structural, and electrical designs. The facility will be based in the province of Quebec, Canada.

Researchers from Rice University, University of Calgary, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology and University of Washington have managed to turn a waste material called asphaltene (a byproduct of crude oil production) into graphene.

Rice University's Muhammad Rahman, an assistant research professor of materials science and nanoengineering, is employing Rice’s unique flash Joule heating process to convert asphaltenes instantly into turbostratic (loosely aligned) graphene and mix it into composites for thermal, anti-corrosion and 3D-printing applications. The process makes good use of material otherwise burned for reuse as fuel or discarded into tailing ponds and landfills. Using at least some of the world’s reserve of more than 1 trillion barrels of asphaltene as a feedstock for graphene would be good for the environment as well.

Nanotech Energy recently reported a demonstration of its graphene-powered batteries' non-flammable qualities in a new abuse test. A Nanotech Graphene-Powered Lithium-Ion Battery 18650 cell was shot by a 4.5BRA bullet at a speed of 2,917 feet per second. Despite the considerable force of impact, the battery did not catch fire and even still held a charge.

In contrast, the company said that a rival commercial battery 18650 cell shot by a 4.5BRA bullet at a speed of 2,915 feet per second immediately burst into flames and no longer held a charge.

Today we published a new edition of our Graphene Supercapacitors Market Report, with all the latest information. The supercapacitor market and industry is facing high demand and graphene is a pivotal material for this application. This new updates includes a revamp of the general report, and updates from over 10 companies and research activities.

Reading this report, you'll learn all about:

• The advantages of using graphene in supercapacitors
• Various types of graphene materials
• Market insights and forecasts
• What's on the market today

The report package also provides:

• A list of all graphene companies involved with supercapacitors
• Prominent research activity in this field
• Free updates for a year

This Graphene Supercapacitors market report provides a great introduction to graphene materials used in the supercapacitor market, and covers everything you need to know about graphene in this niche. This is a great guide for anyone involved with the supercapacitor market, nanomaterials, electric vehicles and mobile devices.

Advanced Material Development (AMD) has announced that it has signed a contract for collaborative work with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for AMD’s proprietary thin-film graphene-based coatings technology - a Radio Frequency absorbing nanomaterial that can be applied to a variety of substrates. JPL is a research and development laboratory federally funded by NASA and managed by the California Institute of Technology.

Image from AMD website, Courtesy of NASA/JPL-CalTech

The collaborative work is planned to be used for the NASA Europa Clipper spacecraft electromagnetic compatibility test campaign. AMD’s materials could help enable the Europa Clipper project to confirm that the spacecraft’s sensitive ice-penetrating radar will operate properly at key frequencies so as to meet science objectives.

Levidian's decarbonization technology will be deployed in the UK for the first time as part of a collaboration with solutions business Eco Group. Levidian stated that Eco Group’s deployment in the south of Scotland will be the first remote implementation of the LOOP technology in the UK. It is also a world-first deployment of a LOOP system with fully integrated hydrogen separation.

The LOOP device uses a patented low temperature, low pressure process to crack methane into its constituent atoms, hydrogen and carbon, without the need for catalysts or additives - decarbonizing methane-rich gas to deliver hydrogen and graphene on site.

Researchers from Northeastern University in Boston and University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) have used a process called auger-mediated positron sticking (AMPS) to  develop a new technique that can measure the properties of the topmost atomic layer of materials.

This spectroscopic tool uses virtual photons to measure the topmost atomic layer’s electronic structure selectively. When incoming positrons change from vacuum states to bound surface states on the sample surface, they produce virtual photons with the energy to excite electrons into the vacuum.