Researchers at UCLA’s California NanoSystems Institute have successfully combined laser-scribed graphene and manganese dioxide (which is currently used in alkaline batteries since it holds a lot of charge and is cheap and abundant) to create a new energy storage device with outstanding qualities. The new hybrid supercapacitor stores large amounts of energy, recharges quickly, and can last for more than 10,000 recharge cycles.

The scientists also created a microsupercapacitor that is small enough to fit in wearable or implantable devices. At just a fifth of the thickness of a sheet of paper, it can hold more than twice as much charge as a typical thin-film lithium battery.

The UK-based Perpetuus Advanced Materials announced an exclusive commercial agreement with Heraeus, a leading international precious metals and technology group, headquartered in Germany.

As part of this collaboration, Heraeus has completed quality control and customer feedback exercises based on Perpetuus nano carbon, low temperature, high conductivity, functionalized graphene-based inks. Along with Perpetuus, Heraeus will now launch the new range of high quality, cost effective pastes. Production is set to commence immediately.

The Canadian Grafoid aims to purchase the Germany-based Ames Rubber Corp. by June 30th. Ames Rubber specializes in elastomeric materials and processes, holds numerous patents and has customers in office automation, aerospace, defense, automotive, medical, and other industrial sectors.  

Grafoid representative says that the purpose in acquiring Ames is to broaden the company's opportunities by bringing its Mesograf graphene materials into an established, high-value market through a diverse range of elastomeric materials, working with an experienced team of engineers and scientists. Grafoid also states that Ames might be its springboard into the $700 billion rubber and plastics market.

This week's Graphene-info personal interview features Javan Haley. If you wish to be featured, contact us here.

• Javan Haley: works for the DoD at Joint Base MDL, NJ taking care of shipping and receiving cargo for the base as a materials handler. Also serves as 'Dirt Boy' in the NJ ANG. I am a graphene evangelist who has been researching graphene daily since 2010. I also recently started a graphene-focused blog where I want to provide a trove of graphene information for the public to chew on.

Following the declaration of the world's first graphene-enhanced light bulb preparing for commercial sale, here's a BBC News video: 

Researchers at the Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences and Research Centre in India demonstrated that graphene oxide nanoflakes can enhance the properties of artificial composites to provide supportive scaffolds that encourage bone repair.

According to the scientists, a great challenge is to design a biomaterial that should match the properties of native healthy bone, Properties like biocompatibility, chemical composition, porosity, degradation and mechanical stability that are critical in determining the success of the biomaterial. Traditional treatments for bone fractures that fail to heal spontaneously are bone grafts taken from elsewhere in the patient's body, causing pain and potential damage to the harvested site.

Scientists from the Novosibirsk Nikolayev Inorganic Chemistry Institute and the Krasnoyarsk Biophysics Institute have invented a new composite material made of graphene and nano-diamonds. By placing nano-diamonds on the surface of vertically aligned tubes of graphene (probably carbon nanotubes), the scientists created a unique composite material that glows under the impact of a weak electric field.

The researchers say this is the prototype of a tiny light fixture, a nano-tube with a glowing nano-diamond on top. Such structures can be used in a variety of fields, from new types of displays to health diagnostics techniques.

Scientists at the University of Melbourne, the Australian Synchrotron and La Trobe University discovered that graphene can distinguish the four nucleobases that make up DNA and potentially be used to sequence DNA without the need for labels.

The researchers found that each nucleobase influenced the electronic structure of graphene in a measurably different way. When used together with a nanopore, a single DNA molecule would pass through the graphene-based electrical sensor enabling real-time, high-throughput sequencing of a single DNA molecule. The use of graphene to electrically sequence DNA promises to improve the speed, throughput, reliability and accuracy whilst reducing the price compared to current techniques.