Researchers from Sweden demonstrated a simple and mature technology for inkjet printing of high quality few-layer graphene.

The researchers exfoliate graphene from graphite flakes in dimethylformamide (DMF), and then DMF is exchanged by terpineol through distillation (there is a large difference between DMF's and terpineol's boiling points). Terpineol is of much lower volume than DMF and so the graphene is significantly concentrated. Terpineol is also non-toxic and features high-viscosity.

Agar Scientific, a supplier of accessories for microscopy, launched a new range of graphene oxide (GO) support films for TEM. Those new films have been developed in collaboration with the University of Warwick.

Agar says that the new GO film provides a thinner support film of higher mechanical strength, electrical and thermal conductivity compared to support films made from other materials. Agar GO support films are available on holey and lacey carbon and Quantifoil support films.

Researchers from Michigan Technological University developed a new "3D Graphene" material that can be used to replace platinum used in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC). The new material is cheap and easy to make, and using it as an electrode the researcher fabricated a DSSC cell that has an energy efficiency of 7.8% (conventional platinum-electrode based solar cell achieve 8%).

To synthesize this new material, the researchers combined lithium oxide with carbon monoxide in a chemical reaction that forms lithium carbonate (Li2CO3) and the honeycomb graphene. The Li2CO3 helps shape the graphene sheets and isolates them from each other, preventing the formation of garden-variety graphite. It's easy to remove the Li2CO3 particles using acid.

Researchers from the University of California, Riverside developed a graphene based transistor based on negative resistance rather than trying to open up a band gap. Negative resistance is the counterintuitive phenomenon in which a current entering a material causes the voltage across it to drop. It was shown before that graphene demonstrates negative resistance in certain circumstances.

The idea is to take a regular graphene field-effect transistor (FET) and find the circumstances in which it demonstrates negative resistance. This dip in voltage is used as a kind of switch - to perform logic. The researchers showed how several graphene FETs combined can be manipulated to produce conventional logic gates. The researchers designed such circuits that can match patterns (but they have yet to actually produce them).

Researchers from Korea and the Netherlands discovered a new type of ice that forms between graphene oxide layers.

The researchers stacked graphene oxide layers and then passed water through the material (which acts as a membrane) and froze it. This created a single-layer ice. The researchers then used more water and froze it again, which resulted in unique bi-layer ice.

Graphen Laboratories has become Moorfield's exclusive US distributer for their nanoCVD systems. Those new systems (launched in Europe in early 2013) enable easy, R&D scale production of CVD graphene and carbon nanotubes on a variety of substrates. The systems will be distributed by Graphene Laboratories via Graphene Supermarket.

The nanoCVD range consists of compact yet powerful units which include features such as low thermal mass heater stages, cold-walled reaction chambers and fully automatic controls enable rapid synthesis. The primary focus of these systems is in the academic sector, but Moorfield says that the nanoCVD systems have also proven attractive for industrial product development.

Researchers from the University of Minnesota are developing a sensor platform that will help create an artificial pancreas. The wireless sensor that will continually monitor blood glucose will be based on graphene and it can be placed in blood vessels for accurate and continual monitoring.

This new project was funded by the 2013 Discovery Transformation Grant Program. This is one of four projects that received $2 million in total.

Carbyne is a chain of carbon atoms linked either by alternate triple and single bonds or by consecutive double bonds. This material does not exist in nature (although astronomers believe they have detected its signature in interstellar space) but it can be synthesized (a couple of years ago researchers managed to make carbyne chains up to 44 atoms long in solution).

Researchers thought that it is a very unstable material (some chemists have calculates that two strands of carbyne coming into contact would simply explode). But now researchers calculated that Carbyne is about twice as stiff as the stiffest known materials today, and is it significantly stronger than diamond, carbon nanotubes and graphene.

Researchers from Sweden have shown how nano-scrolls can be created by doping graphene with nitrogen and adding magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles. This new material may have very good properties for application as electrodes (for Li-Ion batteries and other devices).

To create the scrolls, the researchers doped graphene with nitrogen atoms. This enable them to anchor iron oxide particles using a solution process. The process enables to control the type of iron oxide nanoparticles that are formed on the graphene surface. It's possible to form a hematite (the reddish form of iron oxide that often is found in nature) or maghemite (a less stable and more magnetic form of iron oxide).

Bilayer graphene is supposed to have a bandgap, but experiments showed that this material cannot be turned into a real insulator. Now researchers from Berkeley Lab's Advanced Light Source (ALS) institute discovered that this is caused by tiny twists in the bilayer material, caused by subtle misalignments of the two layers. This twist can lead to surprisingly strong changes in the bilayer graphene's electronic properties.

The graphene layers twist produces massive and massless Dirac fermions. This structure prevents bilayer graphene from becoming fully insulating even under a very strong electric field. The researchers explain that Massless Dirac fermions are essentially electrons that act as if they were photons. As a result, they are not restricted by the same band gap constraints as conventional electrons. These new massless Dirac fermions move in a completely unexpected way governed by the symmetry twisted layers.