January 2013

The University of Cambridge announce plans to establish a new center for graphene research. The Cambridge Graphene Centre (CGC) will start operation on February 1st 2013 and the university will open a dedicated facility with state-of-the-art equipment towards the end of 2013.

The UK government gave a grant of over £12 million to support the new center's activities. The CGC will use the money to buy equipment and support projects that aim to develop new mass-production high-quality graphene production processes and some potential applications. The CGC's director will be Professor Andrea Ferrari.

Back in May 2011, a graphene research program (called FET Graphene Flagship) was shortlisted for one of two €1 billion EU research initiatives. Today we're happy to report that this project was indeed chosen by the European Commission. This is set to be a huge boost to graphene research and will hopefully accelerate commercialization of graphene based products. The EU will officially announce their decision next week (January 28).

The graphene flagship project is led by theoretical physicist Jari Kinaret at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden. The project will focus on developing graphene applications in the computing, batteries and sensor markets. It will also develop related materials. Back in 2011 it was reported that the project already includes over 130 research groups, representing 80 academic and industrial partners in 21 European countries.

Update: read more about Duke's graphene-based artifical muscles research here

Researchers from Duke University are developing ways to control the crumpling and unfolding of large area graphene. By attaching the graphene to a pre-stretched rubber film. When the film was relaxed, parts of the graphene sheet detached, forming an attached-detached pattern with a feature size of a few nanometers. When the film was stretched again, the adhered spots of graphene pulled on the crumpled areas to unfold the sheet.

So basically stretching and relaxing a rubber film, even manually can crumple and unfold large area graphene sheets. This opens up the possibility of all sorts of applications. One example is a graphene film that can be changed from transparent to opaque (it is transparent when stretched but opaque when crumpled).

A couple of weeks ago HEAD announced their new range of graphene tennis rackets (YouTek Graphene Speed series) - and these rackets are now shipping. HEAD offers five different rackets (the Speed Pro 18/20, Speed MP 16/19, Speed S, Speed REV and PWR Speed), ranging from $170 to $286 (with some cheaper racket for kids).

The graphene rackets apparently uses graphene coating on the shaft to make it stronger and lighter. HEAD says that by the graphene helps distribute the weight better and creates a stronger and better controlled racket.

The Swedish Energy Agency granted €60,000 to Graphensic, a Swedish based company (established in November 2011 as a spin-off from the Linköping University) that aims to produce single layer graphene on hexagonal silicon carbide for the electronic equipment market, and related markets.

Graphensic founders have decided to bring in an experienced entrepreneur to bring in complementary business experience in the company as it goes into its next stage now. They will recruit a chairman of the board that will also handle marketing and sales. The company will try and raise further funds in 2013 in order to purchase production equipment.

Researchers from Japan's AIST and NIMS institues developed a new low power graphene transistor design and produced a working prototype. The new transistor is based on a new operation principle, where two electrodes and two top gates were arranged on the graphene, and crystal defects were introduced by irradiating a helium ion beam on the graphene between the top gates.

In this transistor charge movement can be controlled efficiently by applying an independent voltage to the two top gates. Transistor polarity can be reversed by electrical control. That's the first transistor that can do this.

Researcher from Northwestern University developed a new way to amplify signals in hybrid graphene oxide and CNT electrochemical sensors. They use a process called Magneto-Electrochemical Immunoassay to achieve that.

The researchers designed the new hybrid material to correlate the available metal ions with analyte concentration. They used magnetic particles encapsulated in inert coating of silicon dioxide which were later coated with gold (gold is chemically inert and bio-compatible). This process is efficient, fast and cost-effective.

Lux Research released a new report (Is Graphene the Next Silicon ... Or Just the Next Carbon Nanotube?) on the graphene market, in which they forecast that the graphene market will grow to $126 million in 2020 (up from $9 million in 2012). It's an impressive growth - but the overall market will remain small. Most of the growth will come from graphene nanoplatelets (NGP) for the composites and energy storage applications. Graphene sheets will remain mostly in the lab.

According to Lux, the leading companies will be XG Sciences and Vorbeck Materials. Vorbeck is selling higher margin conductive inks, while XG supplies GNPs to corporate channel partners. Regarding newer startups (such as Graphene Technologies, Grafoid, National Nanomaterials, Xolve and Haydale), Lux says it is simply too early to tell.

Researchers from the Beckman Institute have researchers the electronics behavior of graphene with grain boundaries. They explain that when graphene is grown, lattices of the carbon grains are formed randomly, linked together at different angles of orientation in a hexagonal network. But sometimes when the process is not perfect, defects called grain boundaries (GBs) form. These boundaries scatter the flow of electrons in graphene, which harms the material's electronic performance.

The researchers grew polycrystalline graphene on a silicon wafer using CVD, and then examined the atomic-scale grain boundaries using scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy. The electron scattering at the boundaries significantly limits the electronic performance compared to grain boundary free graphene.  In fact they say that when the electrons' itinerary takes them to a grain boundary, it is like hitting a hill - the electrons bounce off, interfere with themselves and create a wave pattern. The hill slows the electrons down - which means that the grain boundary is a resistor in series with a conductor.

UK patent consultancy CambridgeIP researched graphene patents and they say that the UK may be falling behind in the graphene race. CambridgeIP identified 7,351 graphene patents (and patent applications), and the leading countries by graphene patents are china (2,204), US (1,754) and Korea (1,160). The UK has only 54 graphene patent applications. Back in February the UK government announced a £50 million graphene drive, which aims to bring the country back to the forefront of graphene research.

The leading research institutes (by patents) are Sungkyunkwan University (Korea, 134), Zhejiang University (China, 97), Tsinghua University (China, 92), Rice University (US, 56), MIT (US, 34) and finally Manchester University (16).