March 2012

Graphenea says that they have finished the expansion works in their labs, and their production capacity has been increased X3 times. The company installed CVD growth and transfer equipment including an Aixtron BM Pro CVD system. The labs now have characterization facilities like Raman, SEM, FEI Titan TEM and AFM.

Graphenea's labs are based in the Nanotecnology Center CIC nanoGUNE in San Sebastian, Spain.

Researchers at the University of Delaware suggest that graphene sheets with nanopores (tiny holes) could be used for ultrafast DNA sequencing based on tiny holes. The study which is based on computer simulation suggests that threading DNA though nanopores can be used to detect the presence of different DNA bases. This is done by a current of ions flowing vertically through the pore or an electronic current flowing transversely through the graphene.

Graphene is just one atom thick and so the nanopore has contact with only a single DNA base. The researchers suggest using nanoribbons of graphene to enable fast and low-cost (less than $1,000) DNA sequencing.

Update: Check out this short video explaining this new research and showing the people behind it, and the next-gen technique unveiled in February 2013

A team of researchers from the UCLA managed to developed laser-scribed graphene (LSG) based flexible capacitors using simple DVD burners. The idea is to deposit Graphite Oxide on blank DVDs and then use a DVD burner (a light scribe drive) which uses a 780nm infrared laser. The laser reduces the Graphite Oxide to pure graphene (LSG). This LSG is placed on flexible substrates which are used as the electrodes for a super capacitor.

This is not just a gimmick process - it will be possible to scale it for commercial production, and these capacitors are fast (20 times faster than standard carbon capacitors and 3 times faster than lithium-ion batteries) and offer good density (twice than that of carbon capacitors and comparable to a high-power lithium-ion battery).

Focus Metals announced it has loaned $500,000 to Grafoid (of which it owns 40%). This payment will be used by Grafoid to pay an unnamed foreign university for a patent pending technology relating to exfoliation of graphite using raw graphite rock.

Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin, USA, have demonstrated high quality wafer-scale deposition of graphene on evaporated copper films (as opposed to copper foil) for the first time. The researchers are using Aixtron's cold-wall vertical BM (Black Magic) Pro reactor, shown below.

The researchers explain that a pre-annealing process is used at first to create a hydrogen-rich polycrystalline copper film, followed by the decomposition of pure methane for the growth of high quality graphene. The growth occurs at a lower processing temperature than on copper foil.

Researchers from Stanford managed to engineer Piezoelectricity into graphene. Piezoelectricity is the property of some materials to produce electric charge when bent, squeezed or twisted. It is reversible - so you can change the materia's shape using an electric field.

A piezoelectric graphene could provide an unparalleled degree of electrical, optical or mechanical control for applications ranging from touchscreens to nanoscale transistors, said the researchers.

Researchers from Toyohashi University managed to reduce Graphene-Oxide (GO) to graphene using microorganisms. This is actually a hybrid approach: the chemically-derived GO flakes were reduced to graphene using microorganisms extracted from a river bank near the Tempaku Campus of Toyohashi University.

This may prove a low-cost and highly efficient method to mass produce graphene. It's also environmentally friendly...

Researchers developed a new process to make flexible transistors from graphene. The new process enable high electron mobility and high frequencies (in the Ghz range). The process uses a graphene in a solution and places it on polyimide substrates.

The idea is to deposit sheets of graphene in solution on the polyimide with an alternating electric field applied between electrodes made in advance. This technique, known as dielectrophoresis or DEP, is used to guide the graphene deposition process so as to obtain a high density of deposited sheets in certain spots. This density is essential for achieving outstanding high-frequency performance.

Researchers from Vanderbilt say they now understand for certain why graphene is so sensitive to its electrical environment. Solving this issue will allow to have better electron mobility in graphene at room-temperature, and come close to graphene's theoretical (but not practical) high electron mobility.

The problem is charged impurities on the surface of graphene. This was suspected before, but is now confirmed. Now the challenge will be to make graphene without those charged impurities.

Researchers from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University claim that they have invented a new graphene-based battery that runs solely on ambient heat. If this is confirmed, it could lead the way towards a clean, continuous and limitless source of power!

The new battery electrodes harvest energy from ions in a solution - that move at room temperature. The thermal energy of these ions can reach several kilojoules per kilogram per Kelvin. The researchers used silver and gold electrodes connected to a strip of graphene, and a copper chloride solution. Six of these devices in series can produce a voltage of over 2 V - enough to drive a red LED.