Researchers from Iran have devised a process to produce graphene by using laser ablation in cold liquid media. They say this process enable a simple and effective control of the resulting graphene sheet.
The researchers say that this process is suited for mass production. They are using a pulsed nanosecond Nd:YAG laser (Nd:Y3Al5O12) in liquid nitrogen. The nitrogen has fast flow circulation.
Back in February the UK government announced a £50 million graphene drive, which included the £38 million national graphene institute at the University of Manchester, which will become a world-class shared facility for graphene research and commercialization activities. This plan is still underway and the University has started the formal tender process to choose a contractor to build the NGI.
The National Graphene Center plan
The project completion is scheduled to begin in Q1 2013 and end by Q3 2014.
Sony has developed a new graphene producing process that use a roll-to-roll method. They have built a machine that can produce graphene sheets up to 100 meters in length (23 cm width), and the resulting sheet is the largest area graphene sheet in the world by far (the previous record was Samsung's 40" sheet from back in 2011).
Sony's new process integrates CVD and roll-to-roll, at a temperature of 1,000°C. The idea is to directly apply a current to a copper (Cu) foil that is the catalyst of graphene and a substrate for the CVD method so that only the Cu foil is heated. As a result, the thermal load on the entire machine was drastically reduced.
Researchers from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed a new graphene based anode that can be charged or discharged 10 times faster than conventional graphite anodes currently used in today’s lithium-ion batteries. To create the new anode material, the researchers took a sheet of graphene-oxide paper and then introduced defects (using a laser or a camera flash) on the material.
The graphene paper, after being damaged, has expanded five-fold in thickness, which means that there were large voids between the graphene sheets. The lithium ions can use the cracks in the paper to quickly traverse the entire sheet - which means faster charges or discharges of the battery.
Grafoid has signed a joint intellectual property development agreement with CVD Equipment Corporation to develop graphene based "NanoToMacro catalyst materials". Grafoid will provide expertise to develop unique intellectual properties including the identification and feasibility for creating new combinations of graphene with carbon nanotubes as a catalyst material.
Both companies have equal rights to share in jointly created IPs and the ability to further the JV on additional terms. The current agreement runs for one year but it's renewable.
XG Sciences announced it has started production in its new headquarters and manufacturing facility in Delhi Township, near Lansing, MI. The new facility has an annual production capacity of 80 tons.
XG Sciences is producing Graphene Nanoplatelets, a high-purity material, produced by proprietary low cost processing methods, which can be used to improve the performance of batteries and capacitors, printed electronics, coatings, and plastic structural components.
Nokia filed a new patent for a graphene-based photo detector. The new detector uses graphene as a photo-collecting layer, and also uses a graphene nanoribbon that acts as a field effect transistor to amplify the current and transfer it to the control electronics. Stacking several such detectors on top of each other with color filters can be done to detect colors.
The big advantage of this graphene-based photo detector is graphene's transparency. The graphene sheet itself absorbs only 2.3% of the light (and does it very evenly across the whole light spectrum) and so should perform much better than CMOS in low light conditions. The graphene sensor will also be vastly thinner than current technologies, and potentially cheaper to produce (once graphene itself is available on the cheap).
IDTechEx launched a new conference dedicated to graphene called Graphene Live. The conference will take place alongside the Printed Electronics and Photovoltaics conference at December 5-6 in Santa Clara, California, USA. IDTechEx says that the event will bring together users, material providers, equipment makers, policymakers, academics and investors from more than 30 countries, and will cover more than 30 speakers over the two days.
Graphene-Live will include a conference and a tradeshow, and will have six technology tracks: touch screens and ITO replacement, energy storage, logic and memory, graphene composites and paints, functional inks and sensors and bio-electronics.
Researchers from the HRL labs in California have developed the world’s first graphene-based square-law millimeter detectors. These new detectors sport the highest linear dynamic range (over 60 dB) ever measured in a semiconductor detector. They say that this could lead to better high-bandwidth communications, imaging and radar systems.
The researchers say that their new graphene-based FET detectors out perform the best CMOS or SiGe bipolar detectors by more than 30 dB (linear dynamic range).
Researcher from MIT discovered that graphene's basic properties (chemical reactivity, electrical conductivity and others) can vary dramatically based on the substrate material it is placed on. When placed on silicon dioxide, graphene becomes functionalized when exposed to certain chemicals, but when the substrate is boron nitride, the graphene is inert to the same chemicals.
The research, funded by the US Office of Naval Research, means that you can control the graphene ability to create chemical bonds - using different underlying materials.