Grafoid announced today that they completed a new funding round from private investors, raising just over $3.5 million USD. Earlier in 2013 the company raised a further $1.5 million, which means the company raised over $5 million USD since the beginning of 2013.

The company says that this financing round brings them a step closer to the consruction of their MesoGraf production facilities. Mesograf is Grafoid's graphene-based material announced two months ago. Grafoid collaborates with the National University of Singapore (NUS) and their new spin-off company Graphite Zero on the production, development and marketing of this material.

Grafoid sent us some very interesting news today as the company launched their graphene-based material platform called MesoGraf. They say that they will able to mass produce high-quality graphene at affordable prices. The National University of Singapore (NUS) launched new spin-off company called Graphite Zero which will handle the development and production of MesoGraf. Grafoid holds the majority stake in the new company, and will handle business development and marketing for the new material.

Grafoid says that they have managed to create a low-cost process that will enable them to mass produce graphene Mesograf materials. They say that their one-step chemical process is non-destructive and is environmentally sustainable.

Researchers from Manchester University and the National University of Singapore developed a new, efficient and sensitive solar cell made from sheets of graphene and transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDC). The TMDC (also a 2D material) sheets are very efficient light absorbers while the graphene is used as a transparent conductive layer.

The researchers are optimistic that more and more photoactive "heterestructures" such as the one developed now can be achieved, which will allow them to design multi-functional materials with new functionalities (for example color changing).

Researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have managed to create water that is corrosive enough to etch diamonds. This was discovered by mistake - the researchers attached a layer of graphene on diamond, and then heated it to a high temperature (to encourage bonding). Water molecules that were trapped between the diamond and graphene could not escape (because graphene is impermeable ).

The "trapped", heated water transformed into a supercritical phase that behaves differently compared to "normal" water. It even corroded the diamond.

The National University of Singapore's Graphene Research Centre have launched their new graphene fabrication facility. The new facility will be fully operational by October (the cost is $15 million Singapore dollars, or about $11.8 USD).

The NSU plans to use the facility to develop new technologies for flexible and transparent devices and some new designs that doesn't even exist today.

Researchers from Singapore and the UK demonstrated a dramatic optical limiting effect in graphene using dispersed sub-oxidized graphene. While transparency in graphene is useful, having non-transparent (or light limiting) graphene also has its applications.

The optical-limiting effect achieved using suspensions of carbon nanotubes or carbon black occurs through a 'damage' mechanism involving the development of microbubbles or microplasmas at high light fluence, which increases light scattering and breaks the optical transparency.

Researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) and A*STAR developed a new method to create Quantum Dots from Graphene. The idea is to start with a C60 fullerene (a soccer ball like spherical carbon structure that costs of 60 carbon atoms) and 'open' them up (or decompose them) at high temperature using ruthenium as a catalyst.

The researcher performed the decomposition using a sparser coverage of fullerenes on the catalytic ruthenium surface than previously tried - which gave the fullerenes room to prevent carbon atoms from diffusing from one fullerene to the next.

Researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) invented a graphene-based an ultra-slim broadband polarizer. They say that such a polarizer can broaden the bandwidth of fiber optic networks. A graphene polarizer covers the telecommunication bands from visible to mid-infrared which means that it can be a complete solution for multiple-channel communications.

The team says that unlike regular polarizers (made from thin metal film or semiconductor dielectric) a graphene polarizer has the unique ability to filter out transverse-magnetic-mode and supports transverse-electric-mode surface wave propagation.

Researchers from Singapore discovered that graphene quantum dots can be made from carbon-60 molecules (C60, known as buckyballs). This is the first "bottom-up" approach to make graphene quantum dots - which could lead to more efficient and cheaper designs.

The QDs are smaller then 10nm in size and are all in the same size and shape. The idea is to decompose C60 molecules at high temperatures on a ruthenium metal surface. The metal acts as a catalyst and causes the C60 to break down into carbon clusters. The researchers were able to limit cluster aggregation and at around 825K temperature the clusters merged and crystallized into hexagonal-shaped graphene QDs.

Researchers from the A*STAR Institute of Materials Research and Engineering and the National University of Singapore have developed an improved design for a Graphene based field-effect transistor (FET). The new device includes an additional silicon dioxide (SiO2) dielectric gate below the graphene layer. This allows for simplified bit writing by providing an additional background source of charge carriers.

The new device can lead the way towards ;grapheneferroelectric FETs to be used for nonvolatile memory. The researchers say that the new design achieved impressive practical results - symmetrical bit writing with a resistance ratio between the two resistance states of over 500% and reproducible nonvolatile switching over 100,000 cycles.