GNPs - Page 13

Researchers from China's Xi'an Jiaotong University suggest a new bio-inspired soft robot platform made from graphene composites. The graphene robot is driven by near-infrared (nIR) light as graphene has excellent photothermal conversion efficiency in the nIR light band.

The team suggests building a microfish made from graphene and polymers. The microfish is controlled by nIR light. This is bilayer (pure-PDMS and GNP-PDMS) platform that is easily produced by scraping coating and spin coating processing. The bilayer platform is a soft photoresponsive material that can work in both air and water.

Haydale ordered two new plasma reactors from Tantec, and should receive those new reactors in December 2014. This will allow Haydale to increase graphene production capacity and increase operational flexibility.

Haydale and Tantec also signed a two-year contract to continue to develop the functionalization process to meet specific needs of customers. A couple of months ago Haydale published a research showing how graphene functionalised resins offer a significant improvement in strength.

Researchers from Spain's University of Santiago de Compostela and IBM developed an extremely simple method to make high-quality well-defined nano graphene flakes from perylene, a common organic compound.

The new method uses arynes as molecular glue to paste graphene fragments together. This results in "clover-shaped" graphene flakes that are deposited on thin insulating films. It is possible to create those nano flakes in different sizes and shapes.

Italy's Directa Plus inaugurated their new graphene factory in Lomazzo, Como, Italy. This plant produces graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs) and has a 30-ton yearly capacity - which the company says is the largest such production plant in Europe. The company says that this is just the first phase of this plant.

The plant will produce Directa Plus' four carbon material types: super-expanded graphite, pristine GNPs, water-dispersed GNPs and fine nanographite powder. All of those materials are marketed under the G+ brand.

Researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and the Korea University developed a simple spray method to deposit high quality graphene flakes films on a range of substrates.

The method is based on a unique kinetic spray deposition system developed in Korea that was originally used to spray materials other than graphene. Together, the researchers adapted this method to graphene and they found that it dispersed evenly and it reduces the tendency of the graphene flakes to aggregate.

Chemical maker Thomas Swan is introducing two new high quality graphene products, under the Elicarb brand. The first is Elicarb Graphene powder which is a graphene nanoplatelet powder, and the second is Elicarb Dispersion (AQ), a water/surfactant dispersed graphene nanoplatelets at a concentration of 1 gram/liter.

To produce these materials, Thomas Swan is using a proprietary graphite exfoliation process which was developed in collaboration with CRANN (Centre for Research on Adaptive Nanostructures and Nanodevices) at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. Thomas Swan says that these products are high conductivity graphene nanoplatelets, with average X-Y dimensions of 1000nm and are free from oxidation and catalyst residues.

Researchers from the University of Cincinnati say that adding even a small fraction of graphene flakes to a polymer-blend bulk-heterojunction (BHJ) solar cell can improve the performance of those solar cells. In fact, the efficiency increased threefold compared to the same cell without graphene.

The researchers explain that graphene's very high charge conductivity helps to maximize the energy absorbed by the plastic solar cell. The performance of these cells is still "well below" the highest efficiency achieved in organic photovoltaic (OPV) devices.

Researchers from the Universities of California and Michigan suggest coating artificial hearts with a catalyst that can help against blood clotting which is a problem for many artificial heart patients that have to rely on blood-thinning drugs (anticoagulants) to stop the clotting.

The catalyst interacts with the blood to convert glucose and L-arginine amino acid to create ntroxyl which prevents blood clots. The catalysts are attached to graphene flakes. Those graphene flakes are key elements in this design as it improves the function of the catalyst and also allows it to be dissolved in water. The graphene flakes are not rejected by the body and are not damaged by the catalyst.

Researchers from Korea's Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNITS) developed new graphene-based FETs (G-FETs), based on boron/nitrogen co-doped graphene nanoplatelets.

The researchers major breakthrough is the development of a new efficient method to produce those BCN-graphene platelets via a simple solvothermal reaction using potassium. Doping the GNPs opens up a bandgap.

Turkey's Grafen and Germany's LUM launched a new research towards water-based colloidal exfoliation process (called Liquid-Phase Direct Chemical Exfoliation)to produce graphene nanoplatelets in bulk. Grafen says that the new process is environmentally friendly, and will enable low-cost GNP production.

The companies report that initial phase research has already provided them with some strong results. The process converts large volume of raw graphite powder to graphene GNPs with nearly pristine crystal structure.