A few months ago, Graphene Labs and Lomiko Metals launched a new company called Graphene 3D Lab that focuses on the development of high-performance graphene-enhanced materials for 3D Printing. Lomiko Metals announced a few days ago that Graphene 3D Lab is going to perform a reverse-merger with Matnic Resources, a public company that trades on the Canadian TSX Venture Exchange (ticker: MIK.V).

When the reverse merge is final, Graphene 3D Lab will own 60% of the new company, while the rest of the 40% will be owned by other funders. Lomiko Metals will invest $300,000 to keep its 15% stake in Graphene 3D Lab. Effectively, this means that Graphene 3D Lab will soon become a public company.

Researchers from Korea's Pohang University of Science and Technology developed a new dry process to transfer CVD-grown graphene. Avoiding any wet chemistry step means that you can place the graphene on water sensitive substrates. The researchers explain that this method may create better performing graphene as they contain fewer defects and charged impurities.

The process starts by coating the graphene with polymeric bilayers made of polybutadiene (PBU) and PMMA. The catalytic metal beneath the graphene are removed and the polymers and graphene are together placed on a sample holder. This is moved onto the target substrate and then nitrogen gas is used to break the edges of the graphene/polymer structure, which is then laminated onto the target substrate.

Researchers at the University of California, Riverside developed a metal oxide modified nanocarbon graphene foam that can be used to increase the performance of supercapacitors (both density and charge times). The researchers say this new foam can enable supercapacitors that can deliver twice the energy compared to current commercial devices.

The researchers report that the graphene foam is used as an electrode system. The researchers developed a process that is scalable. They also report that the foam electrode was successfully cycled over 8,000 times with no fading in performance.

Researchers from Berkeley Lab and the University of California (UC) Berkeley developed a method to open a bandgap in a graphene boron-nitride (GBN) heterostructure using visible light. Using this so called "photo-induced doping" of the GBN the researchers created pn junctions and other useful doping profiles while preserving the material’s remarkably high electron mobility.

Using visible light is very promising as this technique is very flexible and (unlike electrostatic gating and chemical doping) does not require multi-step fabrication processes that reduce the graphene's quality. Using this method, one can make and erase different patterns easily.

Researchers from Nankai University developed a single-cell sensor (optical refractive index sensor) based on graphene field-effect transistors. This new sensor is able to detect a single cancer cell.

The researchers managed to obtain such ultrahigh sensitivity by controlling the thickness of high-temperature reduced graphene oxide. The resolution obtained is the highest values reported for refractive index sensors."

Angstron Materials rolled out several new graphene products. The products (which will actually become available over the next few months) include a line of graphene-enhanced anode materials for lithium-ion batteries.

Angstron calls the Li-Ion battery materials "NANO GCA" and they say that this product line combines high capacity silicon materials with mechanically reinforcing, and electrically conductive graphene. This results in a high capacity anode capable of supporting hundreds of charge/discharge cycles.

Update: It turns out that Konstantin Novoselov did not join the new research institute, he just visited to give a lecture...

In 2013, Shanghai-based Powerbooster Technology developed a graphene-based flexible touch-panels for mobile devices, with ambitious plans to mass produce those panels. The graphene supplier for powerbooster is Bluestone Global Tech (BGT).

Now it is reported that BGT, Power Booster and Xiamen University established the Graphene Industrial Technology Research Institute in Xiamen. The will mainly develop the applications of graphene in batteries, touch screens, cancer treatment, LED lamps, sea water desalination and more.

Researchers at Melbourne's Swinburne University developed a high-quality continuous graphene oxide thin film that has a record-breaking optical nonlinearity. The film may be suitable for high performance integrated photonic devices - useful for communication, biomedcine and photonic computing.

To create this new film, the researchers first spin-coated a graphene-oxide solution on a glass substrate. They then used a laser to create microstructures on the graphene oxide film to tune the nonlinearity of the material. Now they have a platform to fabricate optical components with desired nonlinearity - and all on the same graphene sheet without the need to integrate different components.

Researchers from the National University of Singapore created the world's first nanosized heat engine, made from nanometre-thick fluorinated graphene. Such a tiny engine may be useful in nanorobotics and nanomachines. It can also be used as a valve for microfluids.

The new nano-engine is made of graphene and weakly chemisorbed ClF₃ molecules. The CIF₃ molecules are used as actuators. The engine uses a laser light beam as the ignition plug - when the CIF₃ molecules are exposed to the laser (532 nm wavelength) they sublimate - which expand the volume at the interface between the graphene and the substrate it is grown on. This generates a high pressure (around 23 MPa) and creates a "dome-like blister". The expansion (and later contraction when the laser is turned off) is equivalent to the motion of a piston in an internal combustion engine. The blister size can be controlled by changing the laser power.

Researchers from Germany's Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research and Singapore have shown that the thermal conductivity of graphene changes with the size of the graphene - which actually contradicts Fourier’s law in the micrometer scale. This was shown with computer simulations and later verified in experiments.

The researchers say that "the very concept of thermal conductivity as an intrinsic property does not hold for graphene, at least for patches as large as several micrometers". The researcher found out that the thermal conductivity logarithmically increases as a function of the size of the graphene samples. The longer the graphene patches, the more heat can be transferred per length unit.