Graphene Laboratories announced that they have successfully managed to convert Lomiko Metal's Quatre Milles property graphite to graphene. They have actually produced graphene oxide (GO) and reduced graphene oxide (RGO) samples. The companies hope that they will be able to create graphene materials on a larger scale and at a reduced price.

In the first step of the conversion process the natural graphite flakes were oxidized and turned into GO by modified Hummer's method. This resulted in a stable aqueous dispersion with concentration of 40 g/L. The GO was then converted into RGO, with a surface area of 500 m² /g and an electrical conductivity 4 S/cm.

Update: We discussed Graphene Frontiers' technology and business with their CEO

Graphene Frontiers has been awarded a $744,600 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop roll-to-roll graphene production. This is a SBIR Phase II grant that will focus on scaling Graphene Frontier's production capacity.

Graphene Frontiers was established in 2011 as a spin-off from the University of Pennsylvania to develop the new graphene production technology (which they call "Atmospheric Pressure Chemical Vapor Deposition" - APCVD). Their process can produce meter-long sheets of graphene without a need for a vacuum chamber which will hopefully lead to low-cost production.

Researchers from China’s Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics have been studying graphyne, an allotrope of graphene for desalination applications. They say graphyne is a promising material for this application because it enables high throughput and complete rejection of ions and pollutants. It still requires osmotic pressure though but its energy requirements will be lower than current technologies.

Graphyne is a 2D carbon sheet in which the atoms are connected in a different structure than graphene (some double bonds are replaced with triple bond acetylenic linkages). Graphyne has many nanopores between the atoms that are large enough for water molecules to pass through, but not salt. This means that there's no need to perforate it like is required with graphene and so the researchers theorize that graphyne is more suitable for this application than graphene is.

Today two different teams of researchers released articles describing new advances in graphene-on-silicon based photodetectors. These devices hold promise because it could lead to more simple device fabrication - and those devices will be very fast compared to current photo detectors and be responsive to a wider range of light frequencies.

But basic graphene photodetectors suffer from low responsivity as graphene will only convert about 2% of the light passing through it to electrical current. This is a high value for an atom-thick material, but it's not enough for a real photodetector.

Graphene platform, Cambridge Graphene Platform (CGP) and Nissha Printing will co-develop new electronic devices based on CGP s graphene ink technology. This alliance is expected to last three years.

Nissha will contribute its own printing technology to help develop CGP's inks. The company hopes to apply those new inks in the field of printed electronics. CGP and Graphene Platform will develop the inks themselves (graphene inks and other nanomaterials too) and will provide advice and consulting to Nissha.

Researchers from Cornell University and the University of Ulm have developed the world's thinnest glass - only two atoms thick. This was an accidental discovery by the researchers who were trying to produce pure graphene. They thought they noticed much forming on the graphene, but a closer look revealed it is a glass layer (made from Silicon and Oxygen). They think that an air leak caused a reaction between the copper foil they used and a quartz furnace.

After discovering the glass, the researchers used electron microscopy and produced a picture that revealed the precise arrangement of atoms in glass - for the first time ever. It turns out that William Houlder Zachariasen was quite precise when he suggested glass arrangement in 1932.

Researchers from Korea suggest a new simple, high-yield method (single-step microwaves radiation) to synthesize a new graphene-carbon nanotube-iron oxide (G-CNT-Fe) 3D functional nanostructures. The researchers report that these unique 3D structures can be excellent arsenic absorbents.

Those structures are carbon nanotubes vertically standing on graphene sheets and iron oxide nanoparticles well distributed on both the graphene and the CNTs. These are excellent to absorb arsenic due to the high surface-to-volume ratio and open pore network.

Researchers from the US Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) have moved liquid droplets using long chemical gradients formed on graphene. The idea is that by changing the concentration of either fluorine or oxygen (formed using a simple plasma-based process) you can either push or pull droplets of water (also nerve agent simulant) across the surface of the graphene.

The researchers say that this could lead to applications relating to biological or chemical sensors, and also perhaps electronics and mechanical resonators. They say that in the future, such chemical gradients could be used to perhaps move single molecules.

Bluestone Global Tech decided to open a new European graphene production plant at the University of Manchester. Bluestone will also partner with the University on several projects. Those projects (detailed below) and the pilot production facility are estimated at £5 million ($7.8 million) which will be funded wholly by BGT.

The National Graphene Center plan

This new deal signs the first strategic partnership of the £61 million National Graphene Institute (NGI) established at Manchester and Bluestone is the first company (except University Spin-Offs Graphene Industries and 2-D Tech) to work at the NGI. Specifically Bluestone will open a pre-production facility and will offer graphene material to the University of Manchester's 100+ scientists and engineers working on graphene and other 2D materials. Later on BGT will setup a larger headquarters and a pilot production line at the NGI and will also work towards partnership with other consumer companies.

During a Q&A session, Intel's CEO Brian Krzanich said that the company is working on graphene technologies and that their researchers are seeing some great progress. But graphene is still "a few generations away".

In the best case scenario Intel sees graphene based products emerging in 2019, but that is rather optimistic.