Bluestone Global Tech (BGT) announced that they are now offering a roll of 24" by 300" graphene film on copper (branded Grat-Film). This is the first time that such a large graphene sheet is available.

BGT's online shop currently offers graphene on PET, on Quartz and on SiO2/Si. Hopefully they'll add the new graphene-on-copper product soon - and then we'll know the price of this new product.

Researchers from Oxford University has found a new way of growing defect-free graphene using CVD. Defects weaken the material and prevent electronics from flowing freely through it, and this method could pave the way toward large-scale graphene production.

Graphene domains across grain boundaries

The researchers say that the random graphene flakes which are formed during the CVD process can be lined up by manipulating the alignment of carbon atoms on a relatively cheap copper foil. In fact the atomic structure of the copper surface acts as a 'guide' that controls the orientation of the carbon atoms growing on top of them. By combining the control of the copper foil and the pressure applied during growth makes it possible to control the thickness of these domains, the geometry of their edges and the grain boundaries where they meet.

According to a theoretical study, opening a band gap in graphene can be practically opened by using CH-Pi interactions. The researchers from the Department of Chemistry at the University of Puerto Rico say that due to the equivalence breaking of two sublattices of graphene, a 90 meV band gap is opened in graphene/C4H bilayer. The band gap can be further increased to 270 meV by sandwiching graphene between two C4H layers.

This is the first time the CH/Pi interaction (a weak hydrogen-bond occurring between soft acids and soft bases) in graphene has been studied.

Researchers at the FUNgraphen joint research project have managed to combine graphene with polymers, creating new macromolecules and composite materials that are suitable for plastic applications - on a kilogram scale.

By physically and chemically attaching graphene to polymers, the researchers managed to create large carbon molecules - which are less than a millionth of a millimeter thick but can achieve widths of more than a hundredth of a millimeter. These materials are light, durable, environmentally friendly and conductive. They are also resistant to heat, chemicals and radiation, and are impermeable to gas and liquids.

Researchers from Stanford discovered that single-layer graphene is about 100 times more chemically reactive than double or triple sheets of graphene. The team bombarded single and multiple sheets of graphene (on silicon oxide substrates) with highly reactive hydrogen atoms generated in a stream of charged gas, or plasma. When they looked at the graphene afterwards, they found out that the single sheet of graphene was riddled with etch pits, but thicker layer were hardly pitted at all.

Those pits were caused by graphene's carbon atoms reacting with hydrogen atoms, presumably creating methane molecules that lift up and away out of the graphene sheet. The silicon oxide substrate is a participant in the etching reaction.