Focus Metals announced it has loaned $500,000 to Grafoid (of which it owns 40%). This payment will be used by Grafoid to pay an unnamed foreign university for a patent pending technology relating to exfoliation of graphite using raw graphite rock.

A team of researchers from the University of Cambridge in the UK demonstrated ink-jet printing as a viable method for large area production of graphene devices. The team produced a graphene-based ink by liquid phase exfoliation of graphite in N-Methylpyrrolidone, and used it to print thin-film transistors. The team also printed transparent conductive patterns.

This research paves the way towards all-printed flexible and transparent graphene devices, on any substrate.

Researchers from Lanzhou University in China managed to use water and ethanol to exfoliate inorganic graphene analogues (IGAs) from their parent material. IGAs, like graphene are single sheets of atoms in a hexagonal structure. IGAs are less stable at high temperature and they can act like doped semiconductors without actually adding any dopants.

Producing IGAs is not straightforward, but the new technology synthesizes IGAs by mixing solvents to get the combined advantages of low boiling point and good exfoliation.

Andre Geim from the University of Manchester UK (the 2010 Nobel prize in Physics winner) gives a great lecture on Graphene - starting with an introduction and then giving updates from their latest research:

The Royal Society in London will run a new Summer Science exhibition (in July 5th -10th) that will focus on Graphene. You'll be able to see Graphene under a microscope, create your own single layers of graphene (using a pencil and scotch tape). In Trafalgar Square, they'll setup some "Graphene games" - that you can download to your Android or iOS device...

Nobel Prize laureate Konstantin Novoselov says that making Graphene is easy: all you need is a mobile phone, Graphite from a pencil and a scotch tape. You stick the tape to the Graphite and transfer it to a solid substrate, the mobile phone's screen in that case. He also says that Drinking Vodka can help as it can degrease the surface...

All you need is a good quality graphite and preparing the substrate, says Konstantin.

Researchers from Thailand have synthesized their own proprietary formula graphene polymer conductive ink for use in sensors and displays. They say this is a world's first. The team from the Nanoelectronics and MEMS laboratory at the National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre (Nectec) have used the electrolytic exfoliation method.

Today we learned that Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, who performed  groundbreaking experiments in Graphene, were awarded the 2010 Nobel prize in Physics. They got the prize "for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene". Congratulations guys!

Update: Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov are Noble prize winners!

The American Institute of Physics conducted a poll - who out to win the next Nobel prize for Physics? 320 people cast their votes, and 11.3% of them voted for Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov - for discovering Graphene.

So obviously this is just speculation - and we'll have to wait to see who the real winners are (on Tuesday, October 5th).