The collaboration between the University of Manchester and British sportswear brand Inov-8, which started in 2017 and has already produced the G-Series range of graphene-enhanced shoes, has now also resulted in a pair of hiking boots which utilize graphene.

Building on the above-mentioned use of graphene in trail running and fitness shoes last summer, Inov-8 is now bringing the technology to a market it considers to have been "starved of innovation". Two ROCLITE boots with graphene-enhanced rubber grip have been produced the ROCLITE 335 and the ROCLITE 345 GTX. The former offers increased warmth on cold days, while the latter has waterproof GORE-TEX protection for hiking adventures in wet conditions.

GRAPHOSITE is a 30-month project which started on the 1st August 2018. Its main objective is to develop a Graphene Sensor for Defect Detection and Predictive Maintenance in Composite Materials, for use as a highly efficient, more convenient composite monitoring tool.

This project has been supported by the Innovate UK (£1.3 Million Grant-Project Ref. 104266) and has the participation of 6 Partners: Advise-Deta (project coordinator), DZP Technologies, Cambridge Nanomaterials Technology, Haydale Composite Solutions and TWI.

Zenyatta Ventures has announced its plans to raise up to $3,000,000 CAD (around $2,240,000 USD) on a non-brokered private placement basis. The proceeds will be used for bulk sampling, environmental assessment and community engagement.

Zentayya also provided an update on its graphene market development work ,which has led to the creation of five significant potential market verticals for the Company which include aerospace, biomedical, water treatment, transportation and civil engineering.

Versarien has announced that it has signed a Memorandum of Understanding ("MOU") with China Tiesiju Civil Engineering Group Co Ltd. ("CTCE"), a subsidiary of China Railway Group Limited ("CRG").

CRG is one of the world's largest construction and engineering contractors and is listed on the Shanghai and Hong Kong Stock Exchanges. CTCE is specifically focused on railway, bridge, tunnel and highway infrastructure engineering. It is active in China and overseas, including in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East.

Versarien, the advanced materials engineering group, has announced that it has signed a supply agreement to provide Versarien's new graphene enhanced polymer range to AECOM for a current infrastructure project.

This supply agreement follows the collaboration Versarien entered into with AECOM, a US headquartered and Fortune 500 company. This collaboration covered a project that AECOM and Versarien have been undertaking involving the incorporation of Versarien's graphene nano-platelets into large scale polymer structures used in civil infrastructure projects, with a view to increasing their structural strength.

A team of researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago has been working on a way to facilitate ALS diagnosis by using a thin sheet of graphene. This material produces constant vibrations, also known as phonons, whose characteristics change once other materials are placed on its surface. By measuring these changes, researchers are able to tell the differences in the composition of different materials.

Graphene is just one atom thick, so a molecule on its surface in comparison is enormous and can produce a specific change in graphene’s phonon energy, which we can measure, Vikas Berry, associate professor and head of chemical engineering in the UIC College of Engineering and an author of the paper, said in a news release.

The Graphene Innovation center, a £60 million world-class center dedicated to researching graphene and its applications has been opened in Manchester.

The Graphene Engineering Innovation Center (GEIC) at the University of Manchester will accelerate the commercial impact of graphene and help realize its potential to revolutionize many sectors.

water technology company G2O recently announced a £1.035 million investment in a round led by private equity firm Maven Capital Partners, and plans to sign collaborative partnerships with suppliers and enter global markets to expand customer reach.

Maven Capital Partners, one of the UK’s most active private equity firms, has led a £1.035 million investment in Manchester-headquartered water treatment technology business. A total of £600,000 has been provided by Maven funds, which includes a £400,000 investment from NPIF Maven Equity Finance, which is part of the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund and a £200,000 investment from the Finance Durham Fund, both managed by Maven. The additional £435,000 is from a number of private individual investors.

SaltX Technology, a Swedish energy storage company, recently announced that it has passed the first milestone in the strategic development project together with Ahlstrom-Munksjö, a global manufacturer of fiber-based materials.

Over the last six months, the companies have reportedly been able to verify an industrial manufacturing method to coat graphene on paper and integrate it with SaltX patented nano-coated salt for its large-scale energy storage solution. The graphene manufacturer 2D fab participates in the project and supplies the graphene. The companies are now initiating production runs in Ahlstrom-Munksjö’s pilot line.

A study by Brazilian physicist Aline Ramires with Jose Lado, a Spanish-born researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich), showed that a simple sheet of graphene has fascinating properties due to a quantum phenomenon in its electron structure called Dirac cones. The system becomes even more interesting if it comprises two superimposed graphene sheets, and one is very slightly turned in its own plane so that the holes in the two carbon lattices no longer completely coincide. For specific angles of twist, the bilayer graphene system displays exotic properties such as superconductivity.

The researchers found that the application of an electrical field to such a system produces an effect identical to that of an extremely intense magnetic field applied to two aligned graphene sheets. "I performed the analysis, and it was computationally verified by Lado," Ramires said. "It enables graphene's electronic properties to be controlled by means of electrical fields, generating artificial but effective magnetic fields with far greater magnitudes than those of the real magnetic fields that can be applied."