September 2009

Researchers at Columbia University in New York have made the first electrical-readout nanomechanical resonators made from graphene. The devices, which consist of vibrating sheets of graphene suspended over micron-sized trenches, could be used as highly sensitive, robust, mass detectors.

The researchers has made the graphene into a bridge-like resonators that vibrate at very high frequencies. The frequency changes each time a molecule is absorbed onto its surface.

European researchers discovered that stretching graphene can make it a good semiconductor. Normally, there is a lack of a 'gap' Graphene's energy spectrum. This gap is present in silicon and other materials used by the semiconductor industry. Without the gap, Graphene tends to 'leak' energy when used as a transistor.

The researchers discovered that when you stretch graphene, the semiconducting gap opens.

Researchers from PNNL discovered that adding Graphene to Titanium-Dioxide batteries can make them last 3 times as long.

This might prove to be a good replacement for Lithium-Ion batteries which perform great but are very expensive. Batteries made of Titanium-Dioxide will be much cheaper, and are less fire-prone.

Scientists of the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) have succeeded in making graphene visible on gallium arsenide. Previously it has only been possible on silicon oxide. Now that they are able to view with a light optical microscope the graphene layer, which is thinner than one thousandth of a light wavelength, the researchers want to measure the electrical properties of their new material combination.

A team of researchers from India have discovered the world's hardest plastic nano-composite material. The material was created by reinforcing ordinary plastic with nano-diamonds, and a combination of graphene and carbon nanotubes.

Researchers from Cornell have made a simple solar cell (photodiode) made from a single-walled carbon nanotube (a rolled up Graphene layer). The researchers created just one photodiode (one nanotube). They say that this is could lead to extremely efficient solar cells.

The nanotube is about the size of a single DNA molecule. They wired it between two electrical contacts, and close to two electrical gates, one negatively and one positively charged. The narrow, cylindrical structure of the carbon nanotube caused the electrons to be neatly squeezed through one by one. The electrons moving through the nanotube became excited (they used lasers on the nanotube) and created new electrons that continued to flow. The nanotube, they discovered, may be a nearly ideal photovoltaic cell because it allowed electrons to create more electrons by utilizing the spare energy from the light.

NuPGA is a new startup (founded by Zvi Or-Bach), working on a carbon-based memory process. They want to use Graphene as the reprogrammable memory element inside vias on otherwise conventional FPGAs. The 'graphene-memories' can be reprogrammed an indefinite number of times - and they are insensitive to temperature changes and radiation.

Rice University researchers developed a bulk chemical process that converted nanotubes into nanoribbons, providing the raw material needed to perfect a technique based on using voltage pulses to make or break connections--essentially turning the carbon ribbons into reprogrammable switches. NuPGA plans to harness these reprogrammable switches in FPGAs by inserting graphite into vias between chip layers, allowing them to be reconfigured on-the-fly.

Scientists succeeded in creating a completely flat, two-layer ice. This kind of water-structure is vital to understanding protein folding and the assembly of cellular membranes and intracellular compartments, says the scientists.

The experimentalists began with Graphene on top of a layer of platinum. Then, they introduced a small amount of water onto the surface in ultrahigh vacuum (that is, no pressure) and very low temperatures. While ice traditionally forms at 273 Kelvin, for this experiment, the temperature was dropped to 125 K, about the temperature of an evening on the moon.

Korean researchers found a new, easy way to make Graphene:  treating graphite with heat and a solution containing fluorine to produce expanded graphite -- graphite with widened gap between the layers -- which can then be placed in water-based solutions or organic solvents to produce graphene.

According to the research team, the new method is simpler and faster than existing methods of graphene production.

There's an interesting interview with Dr. Welser, the Director of the Nanoelectronics Research Initiative (NRI). The NRI was established in 2004 in order to develop post-silicon CMOS computing technologies, which will be needed by 2020 if not earlier.

Here are the Graphene related questions: