Oxford Instruments announced the launch of a new collaborative project with the UK’s National Physical Laboratory (NPL) and the National Graphene Institute (NGI), partially funded by the Innovate UK for development of a commercial measurement system for nanotechnology applications.

The proposed turnkey system will be developed at the Oxford's Tubney Woods, UK site. The measurement system will be operating at cryogen free low magnetic fields and will enable primary resistance calibrations with unprecedented accuracies to be used by national metrology laboratories and industrial companies. The system will reduce operational costs, save time and complexity.  

Saint Jean Carbon announced that it has been invited by the National Research Council (NRC) of Canada to take part in a special interest group that will develop and propose standards for graphene made by exfoliation methods from natural graphite. The project will be broken into a number of phases; the first phase will take approximately one year to complete.

The NRC sees an excellent opportunity for graphene producers to work together in collaboration with the NRC to determine the optimal techniques to properly characterize graphene and develop standardized methods for use in confidently comparing graphene materials, thereby strengthening the graphite industry as a whole.

A new joint innovation by the University of Cambridge and the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), the UK’s National Measurement Institute, could lead to redefining the ampere in terms of fundamental constants of physics.

The international system of units (SI) comprises seven base units (the metre, kilogram, second, Kelvin, ampere, mole and candela) which should be stable over time and universally reproducible. This requires definitions based on fundamental constants of nature which are the same wherever you measure them. As of now, however, the definition of the Ampere is prone to instability. The highest global measurement authority, the Conférence Générale des Poids et Mesures, has proposed that the ampere be re-defined in terms of the electron charge.

An international graphene standards and testing centre was officially launched at Zhongguancun Fengtai Science Park, Beijing, China, in October 2015. As the demand for international standards for testing graphene increases, the Centre in Beijing will lay the foundation for the development of graphene industry and high-end applications in China.

A China-UK graphene conference was held as part of the launch activities on October 24, 2015 and graphene experts from China and the UK's National Physical Laboratory (NPL) discussed graphene R&D progress and the development of graphene international standards. The graphene conference was part of a programme of activities between NPL, Beijing Zhongguancun Fengtai Science Park and the associated Beijing Fengtai New Materials Inspection Institute (BFM), to support the development of standards and testing in China.

Haydale recently developed a unique graphene functionalization test method, which is also quick, accurate and performed in-house. This test method helps determine the type and extent of functionalization present on graphene materials and could help change the way graphene assessment and quality control is done, as traditional methods ( like XPS, FTIR etc.) can be expensive, time consuming and require a high level of expertise.

The company’s new method provides a rapid, simple and repeatable test to confirm the effectiveness of functionalization processes. Furthermore, the method is able to indicate the level of functional groups added and to discriminate between different functional groups. Complimentary to traditional chemical characterization methods currently used by graphene industry, Haydale's new dispersion stability tester provides an affordable and reliable quality control tool for functionalized graphene process development and manufacturing.

Graphenea's Inigo Charola recently announced that the Graphene Flagship has established a standardization committee. The committee will aim to deliver a publication within a year regarding standard methods of characterizing graphene. The end goal of the standardization effort is to produce a database of the different forms of graphene with all their properties and ways of measuring those properties, so that graphene sellers can properly categorize their products and buyers will know exactly what they are buying.

Currently there is no established standard for graphene, which causes much confusion in the market. 

Zhongguancun Fengtai Science Park in Beijing recently signed a memorandum of understanding and a confidentiality agreement with the UK's National Physical Laboratory (NPL) and Beijing Fengtai New Materials Inspection Institute.

The three parties will cooperate on standard testing and measurement of graphene and two-dimensional materials.

A collaborative research project in Europe has succeeded in producing and operating a large number of electronic devices from a sizable area of graphene layers (approximately 50 mm2). The graphene sample, was produced epitaxially - a process of growing one crystal layer on another - on silicon carbide. Having such a significant sample not only proves that it can be done in a practical, scalable way, but also allowed the scientists to better understand important properties.

The second key breakthrough of the project was measuring graphene's electrical characteristics with unprecedented precision, paving the way for convenient and accurate standards to be established. For products such as transistors in computers to work effectively and be commercially viable, manufacturers must be able to make such measurements with incredible accuracy against an agreed international standard.