Back in February the UK government announced a £50 million graphene drive, which included £38 million for the National Graphene Institute (NGI) at the University of Manchester (construction is scheduled to begin soon). The BBC posted about the NGI, showing us how the building will look like:

The National Graphene Center plan

The five-story 7,600 square meter building (which will be located on Booth Street East) will include a large research lab and two clean rooms. According to the current plan it will be ready in 2015, which is actually a delay (originally they planned to complete it by Q3 2014).

Researchers from the University of Manchester and Aix-Marseille University developed a new optical device that can analyze a single molecule quickly, using Plasmonics (the study of vibrations of electrons in different materials). This could lead to virus detectors, fast and accurate athlete drug testing and explosive tracking in airports.

The device uses artificial materials with topological darkness that are highly sensitive to a single small molecule (this relies on topological properties of light phase). The artificial material is covered with graphene (which they say is one of the best materials that can be used to measure the sensitivity of molecules). Basically the device is like a single-molecule microscope.

We now have more information on another project that received funding as part of the UK government's £21.5 million graphene R&D boost. Royal Holloway (in collaboration with the National Physical Laboratory and University College London) will focus on using single-sheet graphene to develop new equipment that can operate at high frequencies (Thz).

Possible application scan be health screening and remote detection of explosives and drugs.

HEAD unveiled their new YouTek Graphene Speed racket, which 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. Novak Djokovic, the world's top ranked tennis player will start using the graphene racket soon:

Sadly we don't have any technical details about the graphene used here and who's the supplier. HEAD didn't reveal when they'll release the new racket, and at what price.

A few weeks ago the UK government announced extra funding of £21.5 million to boost graphene research and development in the UK. One of the projects that got £1.1 million is a joint-venture between the University of Bath and the University of Exeter to develop a new graphene production method based on standard atomic layer deposition.

This project (located at the University of Bath's Center of Graphene Research) aims to develop a method to fabricate graphene directly onto a wide range of important materials (like semiconductor wafers) - this will hopefully accelerate the commercial update of graphene.

Researchers from Rice University and Lomonosov Moscow State University discovered that Graphene Oxide can quickly remove radioactive material from contaminated water. They found out that graphene oxide bind quickly to natural and human-made radionuclides and condense them into solids.

This discovery is obviously useful in contaminated site cleanups (such as the Fukushima nuclear plants), but is also useful in hydraulic fracturing (fracking) for oil and gas recovery and rare earth mineral mining.

Researchers from Australia discovered that molybdenum oxides can be used to improve graphene’s charge-carrying capabilities. This can results in devices that are smaller and/or enable faster data transfer.

The researchers created new sheets of this hybrid material using exfoliation. Those sheets are 11 nanometers thick and can be turned into a semiconductor (to fabricate transistors for example). The final device features an electron mobility greater than 1,100 cm²/Vs - higher than the current standard for low dimensional silicon.