Graphene applications: what is graphene used for?

Graphene is a one-atom-thick sheet of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb-like pattern. Graphene is considered to be the world's thinnest, strongest and most conductive material - to both electricity and heat. All this properties are exciting researchers and businesses around the world - as graphene has the potential the revolutionize entire industries - in the fields of electricity, conductivity, energy generation, batteries, sensors and more.

Mechanical strength

Graphene is the world's strongest material, and so can be used to enhance the strength of other materials. Dozens of researches have demonstrated that adding even a trade amount of graphene to plastics, metals or other materials can make these materials much stronger - or lighter (as you can use less amount of material to achieve the same strength).

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Such graphene-enhanced composite materials can find uses in aerospace, building materials, mobile devices, and many other applications.

Thermal applications

Graphene is the world's most conductive material to heat. As graphene is also strong and light, it means that it is a great material to make heat-spreading solutions, such as heat sinks. This could be useful in both microelectronics (for example to make LED lighting more efficient and longer lasting) and also in larger applications - for example thermal foils for mobile devices.

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Energy storage

Because graphene is the world's thinnest material, it is also the material with the highest surface-area to volume ratio. This makes graphene a very promising material to be used in batteries and supercapacitors. Graphene may enable devices that can store more energy - and charge faster, too. Graphene can also be used to enhance fuel-cells.

Coatings ,sensors, electronics and more

Graphene has a lot of other promising applications: anti-corrosion coatings and paints, efficient and precise sensors, faster and efficient electronics, flexible displays, efficient solar panels, faster DNA sequencing, drug delivery, and more.

Graphene is such a great and basic building block that it seems that any industry can benefit from this new material. Time will tell where graphene will indeed make an impact - or whether other new materials will be more suitable.

Latest graphene application news

First Graphite joins Australian graphene research hub

Jul 23, 2017

First Graphite, the Australia-based graphite miner and graphene producer, recently announced that it has become a Tier 1 partner to the Australian Research Council Research Hub for Graphene Enabled Industry Transformation (ARC Graphene Research Hub).

The ARC Graphene Research HUB aims to provide knowledge, innovative research and commercial development of graphene technologies across broad areas. Under the Terms of the ARC Hub agreement FGR will focus on the areas of fire retardants, where the Company already has global licence to exploit the technology, development of conductive graphene coatings and development of graphene polymer composites.

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Read the full story Posted: Jul 23, 2017

Chinese scientists design a flexible graphene-based energy storage membrane

Jul 19, 2017

Researchers from Tsinghua University in China have designed a low-cost energy storage device using a TiO2-assisted UV reduction of sandwiched graphene components. The sandwich structure consists of two active layers of reduced graphene oxide hybridized with TiO2, with a graphene oxide separator (rGO-TiO2/rGO/rGO-TiO2). In the device, the separator layer also acts as a reservoir for the electrolyte, which affects ion diffusion—a known problem for layered membrane devices—and affects both the capacity and rate performance.

Graphene flexible supercapacitor membrane process image

The team explained that a step-by-step vacuum filtration process is used to form the membrane structure, and the amount of graphene oxide used in the filtration solutions can be adjusted to precisely tune the thickness of each layer. Irradiation of the dried membrane with UV light then reduces the graphene oxide to rGO with assistance from the TiO2.

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Read the full story Posted: Jul 19, 2017

Researchers in India develop a graphene-silver-pyyrole composite for supercapacitors

Jul 16, 2017

Researchers at the India Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, have developed a new graphene, silver and pyyrole nanocomposite material suitable for making supercapacitors.

The nanomaterial was made of a graphene sheet onto which silver nanoparticles, each about 15-20 nanometers wide, had been embedded uniformly. The material was shown to have a high specific capacitance of 472 farad per gram at a current density of 0.5 amperes per gram. It could retain 95% of its capacitance after 1,000 consecutive charge-discharge cycles.

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Read the full story Posted: Jul 16, 2017

Graphene/cellulose nanofiber hybrid sensor to efficiently detect alcohol

Jul 14, 2017

An international group of researchers from Saudi Arabia, China and the US have developed a graphene-bacterial cellulose nanofiber (GC/BCN) hybrid sensor to detect alcohol (ethanol) with great efficiency. The sensor was described as flexible, transparent, highly sensitive and with an excellent alcohol recognition performance. Electrical tests in different liquid environments were performed, with remarkable results.

The researchers created a composite thin film composed of graphene and bacterial cellulose nanofibers. In this material, the bacterial cellulose nanofibres act as the host and the graphene as the filler material. Due to its excellent conductive properties, it was reported that graphene does not require the addition of a conductive filler material, unlike many composites. The Researchers constructed the composite using a combination of wet chemical, blending, sonication (Cole-Parmer), centrifugal (Centrifuge 5810, Eppendorf), dialysis and sputtering (Equipment Support Co) methods.

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Read the full story Posted: Jul 14, 2017

Innovate UK launches graphene commercialization effort

Jul 11, 2017

Innovate UK's (London, UK) Knowledge Transfer Network (KTN) has launched a Graphene Special Interest Group that is focused, in part, on commercialization of graphene in composite materials applications.

The purpose of the special interest group is to provide a forum through which graphene suppliers can connect with composites fabricators to work together to integrate graphene into products. There are 80 companies in the Graphene Special Interest Group, a number that will hopefully to grow to 200-250.

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Read the full story Posted: Jul 11, 2017