February 2015

This week's Graphene-info personal interview features Andrew T. Smaha. If you wish to be featured, contact us here.

• Andrew T. Smaha, Conference Director, Smithers Information: Andrew manages and creates a portfolio that includes emerging technologies and materials such as OLEDs, LEDs & SSL, Graphene, Tire Technology & Vehicle Dynamics, Color Science & Pigments, TiO2, Carbon Black, Met Coke, Silicone Elastomers, TPE, and others. For these sectors, Andrew connects researchers, suppliers, producers and buyers by producing several market-leading global business and technology summits.

A science and technology roadmap for graphene, related two-dimensional crystals, other 2d materials, and hybrid systems was put together in a joint effort by over 60 academics and industrialists. The roadmap covers the next 10 years and beyond, and its objective is to guide the research community and industry toward the development of products based on graphene and related materials.

The roadmap highlights three broad areas of activity. The first task is to identify new layered materials, assess their potential, and develop reliable, reproducible and safe means of producing them on an industrial scale. Identification of new device concepts enabled by 2d materials is also required, along with the development of component technologies. The ultimate goal is to integrate components and structures based on 2d materials into systems capable of providing new functionalities and application areas.

Scientists at the University of Manchester found that graphene oxide may act as an anti-cancer agent that selectively targets cancer stem cells (CSCs). In combination with existing treatments, this could eventually lead to tumor shrinkage as well as preventing the spread of cancer and its recurrence after treatment.

The team prepared a variety of graphene oxide formulations for testing against six different cancer types - breast, pancreatic, lung, brain, ovarian and prostate. The flakes inhibited the formation of tumor sphere formation in all six types, suggesting that graphene oxide can be effective across a large number of different cancers, by blocking processes which take place at the surface of the cells. The researchers suggest that this may deliver a better overall clinical outcome when used in combination with conventional cancer treatments.

Today we moved Graphene-Info to a new web server. This new server is a lot faster than our previous one, and hopefully you'll notice that the site is now displayed somewhat faster. In the past few months we had server service outages (mostly due to server load, because our traffic increases), and hopefully the new server won't suffer from these issues.

If anyone sees any errors or weird behavior, please let us know and we'll fix it. Enjoy the new, faster, Graphene-Info!

Haydale announced its intention to enter a collaborative agreement with Alex Thomson Racing the HUGO BOSS sponsored extreme sailing team. Haydale, through its newly acquired subsidiary EPL Composite Solutions Limited, will work with ATR to incorporate graphene enhanced materials in their Research and Development program to improve overall strength and stiffness of a number of key structures within the ATR boat. Through incorporating new graphene enhanced materials in their future boat designs - ATR are seeking to keep their vessel light to ensure optimum speed without compromising on strength.

The initial work will include an immediate review to ascertain weight saving opportunities. In particular the parties are keen to make use of the recent work done by Haydale in adding their functionalised HDPlas® Graphene Nano Platelets (GNPs) into both Carbon Fibre Reinforced Plastic ("CFRP") and epoxy resins.

The Canadian Graphene Sensors Inc. announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding with Meditel, a major hospital chain based in Chennai, India. According to the agreement, Meditel will test and evaluate the Company’s GS7 Sensor and provide the Graphene Sensors Inc. with detailed feedback as appropriate.

Graphene Sensors Inc. relayed that the relationship with Meditel is a great opportunity as it is a leading medical tech developer in India, and to work with their team of surgeons will help the company to continue to advance the development of robotic surgical technologies. Meditel's chairman added that "Nano assisted surgery represents one of the most exciting innovations in thoracic, abdominal and pelvic surgery in years. We look forward to offering these procedures to our patients to help combat cardiac disease, as well as prostate and uterine cancer.

Haydale announced it has entered into a 5 year exclusive pipeline agreement with Swansea University and Swansea Innovations.

The agreement stipulates that Swansea will carry out a series of internally funded research projects to produce prototype applications using a range of Haydale materials. These materials can be the functionalised Haydale Graphene Nano Platelets (GNPs), and the Haydale conductive and insulating inks formulated by its collaboration partner the Welsh Centre for Printing and Coating (WCPC).

Lomiko Metals recently announced forming a new graphene-related venture called Graphene Energy Storage Devices (Graphene ESD Corp.) to commercialize their energy storage technology. Now, Lomiko has announced the signing of a research agreement between Graphene ESD and Stony Brook University.

Graphene ESD Corp. will partner with the SBU Center for Advanced Sensor Technologies (Sensor CAT) to develop new supercapacitors designed for energy storage. The device will be designed as a versatile energy storage solution for electronics, electric vehicles and electric grid. SBU will leverage its experience in electrochemistry and will be responsible for the design of the electrode and the electrolyte formulation. The Graphene ESD team will work on device assembly and testing.

A recent study performed at Rice University explored the toxicity of different nanomaterials. A major difficulty in assessing nanomaterial toxicity is that there are many different varieties of nanomaterials and it is too costly to test all of them using traditional methods. The goal of the study was to develop a low-cost, high-throughput method to solve this problem.

The scientists achieved this goal by testing nanomaterials on a worm called Nematode C. Elegans. They designed assays that can test hundreds of nanomaterials in a week. These assays test the effects of each nanomaterial on thousands of worms. The material cost for each assay is only about 50 cents. As a demonstration, they applied their technology to test 20 nanomaterials and found that most of them showed some degree of toxicity. This method can serve effectively as a rapid initial screen to prioritize a few nanomaterials for more expensive, dedicated toxicology testing.

The Cambridge Graphene Centre announced teaming up with Japanese company Nippon Kayaku, a chemicals manufacturer with global activities in functional materials, pharmaceuticals, automotive safety components and agrochemicals.