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).

applications of composites image

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.

graphene-bulb-demonstration-image

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

Haydale reports strong commercial progress in graphene-enhanced composites

Haydale, the global advanced materials group, has announced that strong commercial progress has been made with an unspecified global composite materials group to enhance mechanical properties for selected products in their range of materials, through a commercially funded contract.

Over the last 12 months, Haydale has completed a series of pre-production trials for this customer (who for commercial reasons cannot be named) to enhance these selected products' mechanical performance through the incorporation of graphene in a range of world-wide industrial applications. Haydale reports that to date, it has been paid approximately $150,000 USD by the Customer for these trials.

Read the full story Posted: Jun 20, 2018

Graphene-based sensors to advance diagnostic genome sequencing

University of Arkansas researchers are working together, with support from the National Institutes of Health, to make that prospect of graphene-based sensors that sequence a patient's genome to predict diseases more realistic. Steve Tung, professor of mechanical engineering, and Jin-Woo Kim, professor of biological engineering, have received a grant (of approximately $400,000) from the NIH's Human Genome Research Institute to develop nanoscale technology designed to make DNA sequencing faster, cheaper and easier.

The base of the research builds on the concept of nanochannel measurement, in which individual strands of DNA pass through a tiny channel. The passage of those strands interrupts an electrical current and a sensor detects the nature of the interruption, telling scientists which nucleotide has passed through the channel.

Read the full story Posted: Jun 20, 2018

Inov-8 and manchester University launch graphene-enhanced shoes

In December 2017, Manchester University teamed up with British sportswear brand Inov-8 to become the world's first company to incorporate graphene into running and fitness shoes. Now, Inov-8 announced a new shoe that features graphene, which are hoped to be "a game changer in the industry".

Inov-8 and Manchester University's launch graphene-enhanced shoes image

The Ultimate goal will be to reduce the weight of running shoes by 50%, according to Michael Price, Inov-8’s product and marketing director. The company announced The G-Series range which includes three different shoes – two trail-oriented shoes and one geared for cross-training. The Company estimates that the TerraUltra G 260 will likely be the most popular in Canada – it’s geared for more strenuous trail efforts. The Mudclaw G 260 is geared for extra muddy terrain and obstacle courses. Finally the F-Lite G 290 has been developed for cross-fit athletes to wear in the gym. Each shoe includes graphene-enhanced rubber outsoles and breathable mesh uppers that are enforced with Kevlar.

Read the full story Posted: Jun 20, 2018

New material may triple the capacity of a battery cell and cut charging times

Researchers at the Institute of Energy and Climate Research (IEK-1) in Germany have developed a material comprising tin oxide nanoparticles enriched with antimony, on a base layer of graphene, that can reportedly triple the capacity of a battery cell and dramatically cut the charging time.

"An important factor is the anode material," said Prof Dina Fattakhova-Rohlfing from the Institute of Energy and Climate Research (IEK-1), who led the research. "In principle, anodes based on tin dioxide can achieve much higher specific capacities, and therefore store more energy, than the carbon anodes currently being used. They have the ability to absorb more lithium ions. Pure tin oxide, however, exhibits very weak cycle stability - the storage capability of the batteries steadily decreases and they can only be recharged a few times. The volume of the anode changes with each charging and discharging cycle, which leads to it crumbling."

Read the full story Posted: Jun 19, 2018

Researchers explain the phenomenon of particle-antiparticle annihilation in graphene

Researchers from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT) in Russia and Tohoku University in Japan have explained the phenomenon of particle-antiparticle annihilation in graphene, recognized by specialists as Auger recombination.

Teams explain the phenomenon of particle-antiparticle annihilation in graphene image Two scenarios of electron-hole recombination in graphene: radiative recombination (left) and Auger recombination (right) in which the energy is picked up by an electron passing by

Despite persistently being spotted in experiments, it was thought to be prohibited by the fundamental physical laws of energy and momentum conservation. The theoretical explanation of this process has until recently remained one of the greatest puzzles of solid-state physics.

Read the full story Posted: Jun 19, 2018

Versarien - Think you know graphene? Think again!