Graphene quantum dots are getting a lot of attention lately, as these new materials are entering the market, and as companies rush to find heavy-metal free quantum dots solutions, especially for the display industry. Don't miss our new article that introduces Graphene Quantum Dots and relates the latest activities in this emerging market.
The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Office (CSIRO) has developed a novel method that uses soybean oil and other waste oils to produce graphene. Called ‘GraphAir’, the method is said to make graphene production faster and simpler.
The GraphAir technology is considered simple as it eliminates the need for a highly controlled environment and grows graphene in ambient air. This ambient-air process for graphene fabrication is fast, simple, safe, potentially scalable, and integration-friendly, CSIRO researchers said. Our unique technology is expected to greatly reduce the cost of graphene production and drastically improve the uptake of graphene in new applications.
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In its latest quarterly review, Talga Resources reported interesting highlights such as graphene battery anode testing and work with the IIT on graphene-based sensors.
On the battery front, Talga is conducting a testing program with the University of Warwick, UK, for its graphite products to be used in anodes of Li-ion batteries. In addition to graphite, this program is also testing water-based, rather than toxic solvent-based, graphene anode formulations. The Talga aqueous graphene-based formulations will also be tested under roll-to-roll coating conditions which are suitable for commercial scale battery anode manufacture.
Future Markets has released a new report titled The Graphene and 2-D Materials Global Opportunity and Market Forecast 2017-2027 Report, that predicts that the graphene market will reach $250 million in revenues in 2017.
According to Future Markets, revenues for graphene at the materials supply level will be less than $75 million. However, a growing number of products that make use of graphene and 2D materials across a range of markets (smartphones, supercapacitors, coatings, composites, smart textiles and conductive inks) will be generating revenues of over $175 million, at the component level, in 2017. The market for graphene continues to expand, with new product launches, multi-million dollar funding for companies and start-ups and new government initiatives worldwide.
Ionic Industries is an Australia-based graphene developer that was spun-off from Strategic Energy Resources (SER still holds 20% in Ionic) in 2015. Ionic Developed a proprietary Graphene Oxide production process and is developing GO-based materials and applications.
Simon Savage, Ionic's Managing Director, was kind enough to discuss the company's technology and the status of Ionic's GO applications.
A team of researchers at Kansas State University has discovered a way to mass-produce graphene with three ingredients: hydrocarbon gas, oxygen and a spark plug. The technique involves filling a chamber with acetylene or ethylene gas and oxygen and using a vehicle spark plug to create a contained detonation - all that's left then, according to the team, is collecting the graphene that forms afterward.
The researchers state that this is a viable process to make graphene; they explain that the process has many positive properties, like economic feasibility, the possibility for large-scale production and the lack of hazardous chemicals. What might be the best property of all is that the energy required to make a gram of graphene through this process is much lower than other processes.
A graphene dress was showcased at the Trafford Centre in Manchester. The dress came out of a partnership involving wearable tech pioneers Cute Circuit and the National Graphene Institute at the University of Manchester.
The dress has, according to its designers, ‘futuristic features including a graphene sensor which tracks the model's breathing, adapting its LED lighting to breathing patterns, and utilizing its translucent graphene circuitry.’ This means that it will change color according to the wearer's breathing rate - glowing purple upon fast breaths while slow and turquoise when breathing slowly.
It was recently announced that work on the Smart Filter project, initially declared in October 2015, has begun.
The Smart Filter project - an Innovate UK-funded project led by Haydale and involving The CPI, G2O Water Technologies and Sellafield - aims to develop a low cost self-cleaning coating technology based on functionalized graphene, which once applied to industrial membranes increases their resistance to fouling and enhances ion removal. The technology has already been demonstrated successfully in lab-scale tests.
Researchers at Stanford University have recently demonstrated a graphene-based high efficiency thermal-to-electricity conversion technology, called thermionic energy convertor. By using graphene as the anode, the efficiency of the device is increased by a factor of 6.7 compared with a traditional tungsten anode. This technology can work in a tandem cycle with existing thermal-based power plants and significantly improve their overall efficiencies.
Hongyuan Yuan and Roger T. Howe, among the leading researchers in the Stanford team, explain that one of the major challenges for wide adoption of TECs is high anode work function, which directly reduces the output voltage as well as the net efficiency. The theoretical maximum efficiency for a TEC with a 2 eV work function anode is 3% at a cathode temperature of 1500 K, compared to an astonishing 10-fold increment to 32% with a 1 eV work function anode.