September 2013

BCC Research released a new edition to their "Graphene: Technologies, Applications and Markets" report. They forecast that the global graphene product market will reach $195 million 2018. This will grow quickly to $1.3 billion by 2023 (an annual compound annual growth rate of 47.1%).

BCC Research sees a large graphene market in 2018 compared to other companies. Lux Research sees a $126 million market in 2020 while IDTechEx forecast that the market for graphene will only amount to $100 million in 2018).

Researchers from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute developed a new graphene based coating that can be used to make rough surfaces more water resistant. Those new graphene "drapes" are less than a nanometer thick and are optically transparent and chemically inert. In fact the drape is simply a single graphene layer.

The researchers say this new coating can be used to make better lab-on-chip devices, self cleaning surfaces and other applications that need the motion of liquid drops on surfaces.

Aixtron announced today that the University of Massachusetts (UMass) ordered a BM-4 deposition system for processing 4-inch substrates. The BM-4 was shipped to the University’s Emerging Technologies and Innovation Center (ETIC).

The system will be used for the integration of carbon nanotubes (CNT) and graphene into a large variety of electronic applications ranging from high frequency transistors, energy storage and flexible electronics. Aixtron says that the BM is a highly flexible system which can deposit both graphene and CNT materials with precisely controlled critical surface dimensions. The BM system also features automatic process control, easy recipe editing, an integrated process camera and remote operation via TCP/IP networking.

China's Nanjing JCNano developed a new one-step-transfer graphene. The company reports that these new films are easy to use and they avoid any glue etching cleaning steps. The new films can be clipped freely and can be used conveniently.

In the (somewhat relaxed) video above, you can see how the new graphene film is transferred. Water is dropped on one side, and then when placed in water, the graphene just floats away.

Last week we reported that Graphene Frontiers has been awarded a $744,600 grant from the NSF to develop and scale up their roll-to-roll graphene production. After discussing this with Graphene Frontier's CEO Michael D. Patterson, we have some more information about the company's technology and its business.

Graphene Frontier's technology was developed at the University of Pennsylvania. It is called Atmospheric Pressure CVD, or APCVD. This roll-to-roll process does not need a vacuum so it works in room pressure. The equipment required is smaller, faster and cheaper compared to CVD and this means that the manufacturing will be cost effective.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded $20 million towards a new Science and Technology Center, the Center for Integrated Quantum Materials. In the next five years, this new center will support science and education programs that explores unique electronic behavior of quantum materials. One of those new quantum materials is graphene.

Harvard university will lead the center, and they believe that quantum materials are an emerging technology with enormous promise for science and engineering. The new center will also collaborate with MIT, the Museum of Science in Boston and Howard University in Washington, D.C.

Researchers from Seoul National University developed a simple method to produce graphene nanonet (GNN) patterns on large areas. The patterns, which contain continuous networks of chemically functionalized graphene nanoribbons, could be used to make biosensor devices. These patterns behave better than GO or GNRs which are commonly used for biological sensing applications and are easy to make.

The GNN structures are made from continuous networks of GNRs with chemical functional groups on their edges. The chemical functional groups in the GNN can be functionalized with biological molecules such as DNA for biochip applications. The researchers successfully performed fluorescence imaging of DNA molecules on the GNN channels and has electrically detected the DNA at 1 nM concentrations using the GNN-based biochip devices.

Researchers from the University of Florida and Hunan Univeristy developed DNA-directed silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) grown on graphene oxide (GO). These so called Ag@dsDNA@GO composites act as antibacterial agents, decreasing X. perforans (a model plant pathogenic bacterium) cell viability in culture and on plants.

The researchers say that this material exhibit good antibacterial activity due to the synergistic effect between the silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) and the graphene oxide (GO). In a greenhouse experiment they applied this material on tomato transplants and they reported significant reduction of disease caused by bacterial spot compared to the untreated control and the control treated with copper + mancozeb (a standard treatment). The material did not induce any phytotoxic effect on the leaves.

Grafen Chemical Industries announced a new strategic alliance with Japan's Microphase to develop and commercialize CVD systems suitable for carbon nanotube (CNT) and graphene advanced research.

The partners aim is to offer compact and affordable CVD units for researchers that will enable efficient and reliable carbon nanomaterial synthesis. Towards this goal, Microphase will contribute its comprehensive CVD system product pipeline and know-how and Grafen will contribute its nanosystems expertise for specific research purposes in the region of Middle East, East Europe and Turkey.

Researchers from japan's Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) institute developed a new highly reliable interconnect that features low-resistivity, using multi-layer graphene. They say that this interconnect achieved a resistivity similar to copper (this was achieved by intercalating iron-chloride molecules between the graphene layers. This interconnect may be used to interconnect large-scale integrated circuits (LSIs) to reduce energy consumption.

The researchers used CVD using a cobalt epitaxial film as a catalyst to create the multi-layer graphene. They say that their multi-layer graphene has a structure and electrical properties similar to those of graphene obtained from crystalline graphite, but is i more tolerant than copper to high current densities.