The Swiss watch manufacturer, Zenith, will be launching a new version of their longtime flagship watch, the El Primero, which will sport a hairspring based on a matrix of carbon nanotubes and graphene. The new watch will retail in the neighborhood of $10,000.

The new Defy El Primero 21 will see many upgrades and changes, among which is the use of this new graphene-enhanced composite as Zenith’s proprietary design that is highly resistant to magnetism and temperature variations like many of the best silicium examples currently in use. Like silicium parts, Zenith’s carbon hairsprings are made with a photolithography process, but one that grows the parts on a silicium wafer, rather than etching them from one. A complex series of chemical and gaseous baths and reactions grow the composite at a molecular level and give it outstanding flex characteristics.

A new graphene-focused research and development hub is being launched at the University of Adelaide. The ARC Research Hub for Graphene Enabled Industry Transformation will develop high-value products and innovative solutions for industries as diverse as agriculture, mining, construction, medical technologies, and defense.

The Research Hub will be supporting commercialization of graphene research in a partnership between universities and industry partners. It is funded by the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council’s Industrial Transformation Research Hubs scheme with a $2.6 million grant, with industry partners contributing over $3 million.

Skeleton Technologies has announced the signing of a distribution agreement with Sumitomo Corporation Europe, with the aim of providing energy storage solutions for the rapidly growing hybrid electric and electric vehicle industry.

In electric vehicles, graphene-based supercapacitors can be used in tandem with lithium-ion batteries, doubling the battery lifetime and downsizing the cell receiving the peak power from supercapacitors and the long-term energy from the batteries.

Continuum Technologies, a UK-based company that develops graphene-based sensing nanotechnology embedded into fabrics, has one first prize in the 2017 Nokia Open innovation challenge.

Nokia will offer the startup the opportunity to explore joint business opportunities along with access to Nokia’s global resources.

First Graphene has received a 1.5 Million Australian Dollars (around $1.12 USD) grant from the CRC-P , with funding commencing in 2018.

Just last month, in November 2017, First Graphene announced the opening of it commercial graphene facility.

The University of Manchester has teamed up with British sportswear brand Inov-8 to become the world's first company to incorporate graphene into running and fitness shoes. Laboratory tests have shown that the rubber outsoles of the newly developed shoes, planned to arrive on the market in 2018, are stronger, more stretchy and more resistant to wear.

Michael Price, inov-8 Product and Marketing Director, said: Off-road runners and fitness athletes live at the sporting extreme and need the stickiest outsole grip possible to optimize their performance, be that when running on wet trails or working out in sweaty gyms. For too long, they have had to compromise this need for grip with the knowledge that such rubber wears down quickly... Now, utilizing the groundbreaking properties of graphene, there is no compromise. The new rubber we have developed with the National Graphene Institute at The University of Manchester allows us to smash the limits of grip. Our lightweight G-Series shoes deliver a combination of traction, stretch and durability never seen before in sports footwear. 2018 will be the year of the world’s toughest grip.

Norway-based CealTech was established in 2012 to commercialize a patented 3D graphene production method. The company announced today that it has received its first prototype graphene production unit (called FORZA) - an industrial-scale, Plasma-Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (PE-CVD) reactor.

CealTech will start optimizing its first FORZA PE-CVD system in January 2018, where the production parameters will be fine-tuned to ensure consistent and effective production of high quality 3D graphene.

A team of researchers at the University of Minnesota and Northwestern University, USA, have developed a printing method to produce flexible graphene micro-supercapacitors with a planar architecture suitable for integration in portable electronic devices.

The new process, referred to as ‘self-aligned capillarity-assisted lithography for electronics’ (SCALE), begins with the creation of a polymer template, generated by stamping a UV-curable polymer with a PDMS mold. High-resolution inkjet printing is then used to deposit a graphene ink into the template, which is annealed using a xenon lamp to form the electrodes. In the final step, a polymer gel electrolyte is printed onto the template over the electrodes to complete the configuration.

Researchers from the University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering have created graphene-based tiny electronic tweezers that can grab biomolecules floating in water with extraordinary efficiency. This, according to the team, could lead to a revolutionary handheld disease diagnostic system that could be run on a smartphone.

The graphene tweezers are said to be vastly more effective at trapping particles compared to other techniques used in the past due to graphene's extremely thin nature. The physical principle of tweezing or trapping nanometer-scale objects, known as dielectrophoresis, has been known for a long time and is typically practiced by using a pair of metal electrodes. From the viewpoint of grabbing molecules, however, metal electrodes are very blunt. They simply lack the sharpness to pick up and control nanometer-scale objects.

An international team of researchers from Empa, the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz and the University of California at Berkeley has succeeded in growing graphene ribbons exactly nine atoms wide with a regular armchair edge from precursor molecules. The specially prepared molecules are evaporated in an ultra-high vacuum for this purpose. After several process steps, they are put on a gold base to form the desired nanoribbons of about one nanometer in width and up to 50 nanometers in length.

These structures have a relatively large and, most importantly, precisely defined energy gap. This enabled the researchers to go one step further and integrate the graphene ribbons into nanotransistors. Initially, however, the first attempts were not so successful: Measurements showed that the difference in the current flow between the "ON" state (i.e. with applied voltage) and the "OFF" state (without applied voltage) was far too small. The problem was the dielectric layer of silicon oxide, which connects the semiconducting layers to the electrical switch contact. In order to have the desired properties, it needed to be 50 nanometers thick, which in turn influenced the behavior of the electrons.