First Graphene-led consortium of partners has been awarded a UK Government grant to develop high performance graphene-enhanced cement.

The grant of A$360,206 (around USD$258,500) was awarded by the UK Government’s innovation agency, Innovate UK to the consortium, which includes construction materials group Breedon Cement Ltd, construction and regeneration group Morgan Sindall Construction & Infrastructure Ltd, and the University of Manchester’s Department of Mechanical, Civil and Aerospace Engineering.

Researchers at The University of Manchester, MIT and other international collaborators have succeeded in observing the so-called Schwinger effect, an elusive process that normally occurs only in cosmic events. By applying high currents through specially designed graphene-based devices, the team - based at the National Graphene Institute - succeeded in producing particle-antiparticle pairs from a vacuum.

A vacuum is assumed to be completely empty space, without any matter or elementary particles. However, it was predicted by Nobel laureate Julian Schwinger 70 years ago that intense electric or magnetic fields can break down the vacuum and spontaneously create elementary particles.

It was recently reported that India’s first innovation center for graphene will be set up in Kerala by the Digital University Kerala (DUK), along with Centre for Materials for Electronics Technology (C-MET) in Thrissur, for an investment of Rs 86.41 crore (over USD$11.5 million). Tata Steel Limited is set to be the industrial partner of the center.

The chief investigators of the project, who will also lead it are Dr. AP James of DUK and Dr. A Seema of C-MET. The main collaborators include scientists from the National Graphene Institute, University of Manchester, and other industrial partners from around the world.

Graphene Innovations Inc has signed a new Tier-1 partnership with Manchester University's GEIC center. The company will establish a local company (GIIM) in the UK, with plans to hire 10 employees in the next few months.

The GEIC partnership enables GIIM to equip a private lab in the facility, with access to highly specialised applications labs and equipment, plus the unique academic and engineering expertise of the world-leading graphene and 2D materials community at the University.

Researchers the UK and Spain have demonstrated that tiny graphene neural probes can be used safely to improve our understanding of the causes of epilepsy.

The graphene depth neural probe (gDNP) consists of a millimeter-long linear array of micro-transistors imbedded in a micrometer-thin polymeric flexible substrate. The transistors were developed by a collaboration between The University of Manchester’s Neuromedicine Lab and UCL’s Institute of Neurology along with their Graphene Flagship partners.

A team of researchers, led by Professor Sir Andre Geim at The University of Manchester, in collaboration with scientists from Belgium and China, used low-energy electrons to make individual atomic-scale holes in suspended graphene. The holes came in sizes down to about two angstroms, smaller than even the smallest atoms like helium and hydrogen.

The researchers report that they achieved practically perfect selectivity (better than 99.9%) for such gases as helium or hydrogen with respect to nitrogen, methane or xenon. Also, air molecules (oxygen and nitrogen) pass through the pores easily relative to carbon dioxide, which is >95% captured.

Graphene has a great potential in the construction industry, to increase the performance of materials and structures, to reduce costs and to reduce the environmental footprint of one of the world's most polluting industries.

After years of R&D, it seems as if graphene is finally get ready for commercial adoption on the market. Here's a short interview we did with James Baker, the CEO at Graphene@Manchester who's behind much of the progress we've seen recently.

SmartIR, a spin-out of the University of Manchester, is working on a graphene-based smart coating for satellites, to allow them to control thermal radiation on demand, depending on whether a satellite’s surface is Earth’s shadow or on the side closest to the Sun.

This graphene technology is said to be a far more optimal solution as it is lightweight, has a low power consumption, can respond quickly to temperature changes, operates across the infrared spectrum, and involves no moving parts.

A team of researchers from universities in Loughborough, Nottingham, Manchester, Lancaster and Kansas (US) has revealed that sonic boom and Doppler-shifted sound waves can be created in a graphene transistor.

When a police car speeds past you with its siren blaring, you hear a distinct change in the frequency of the siren’s noise. This is the Doppler effect. When a jet aircraft’s speed exceeds the speed of sound (about 760 mph), the pressure it exerts upon the air produces a shock wave which can be heard as a loud supersonic boom or thunderclap. This is the Mach effect. The scientists discovered that a quantum mechanical version of these phenomena occurs in an electronic transistor made from high-purity graphene.

Specialists at The University of Manchester have teamed up with global architect firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) to research the design and manufacturing of space habitats for the space industry.

The view from inside the viewing deck aboard the Graphene Space Habitat. Credit: SOM and U of Manchester

The international collaboration has Dr. Vivek Koncherry and his team (supported by the Manchester-based Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre) creating a scaled prototype of a graphene-enhanced space habitat with pressurized vessels designed to function in a space environment.