June 2020

Scientists at EPFL have recently published a research that could open up new pathways to boosting the capacity of sodium-ion batteries. Lithium is becoming a critical material as it is used extensively in cell-phones and car batteries, while, in principle, sodium could be a much cheaper, more abundant alternative, says Ferenc Simon, a visiting scientist in the group of László Forró at EPFL. This motivated our quest for a new battery architecture: sodium doped graphene.

Since sodium is far more abundant than lithium, and the risk of fire is much lower with this battery chemistry, it is considered a potentially viable replacement to current lithium-ion technology. But sodium also has much lower energy density than lithium, which has so far limited uptake, particularly in the electric vehicle and consumer electronics segments, where the physical size of the battery is a deciding factor. EPFL's new work uses graphene to address this issue.

Zen Graphene Solutions has announced the closing of the first tranche of its previously announced private placement of units.

The Company raised gross proceeds of CAD$1,077,294.80 (around USD $788,115) under the Offering, which will be used to fund ongoing work on the Albany Graphite Project including graphene research and scale up, COVID-19 initiatives and other graphene applications development and for general corporate purposes. A second tranche is expected to close shortly in line with previous interest received.

Haydale has announced that, further to a successful Phase 1 collaboration agreement with IRPC Public Company (IRPC), a Phase 2 collaboration agreement has now been signed between the two companies. The Agreement will see IRPC developing transparent graphene and functionalized acetylene black conductive inks for RFID, NFC and related applications.

Haydale is to functionalize IRPC's acetylene black product to create the organic RFID ink. The success of this collaboration is expected to pave the way to numerous opportunities in printed electronic applications and be more environmentally friendly than existing inks.

Researchers at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) recently presented what they say is the first mechanically-tunable monolayer graphene QD whose electronic properties can be modified by in-plane nanometer displacements.

The ability to precisely manipulate individual charge carriers can be considered as a cornerstone for single-electron transistors and for electronic devices of the future, including solid-state quantum bits (qubits). Quantum dots (QDs) are at the heart of these devices.

Scientists from the Center for Photonics and 2D Materials of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT), the University of Oviedo, Donostia International Physics Center, and CIC nanoGUNE have proposed a new way to study the properties of individual organic molecules and nanolayers of molecules. The approach is based on V-shaped graphene-metal film structures.

Image credit: Daria Sokol/MIPT Press Office

Nondestructive analysis of molecules via infrared spectroscopy is vital in many situations in organic and inorganic chemistry: for controlling gas concentrations, detecting polymer degradation, measuring alcohol content in the blood, etc. However, this simple method is not applicable to small numbers of molecules in a nanovolume. In their recent study, the research team proposed a way to address this issue.

Researchers at Iowa State University and Northwestern University have developed graphene sensors that are printed with high-resolution aerosol jet printers on a flexible polymer film and tuned to test for histamine, an allergen and indicator of spoiled fish and meat.

Image courtesy of Jonathan Claussen, taken from Iowa State University's website

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has set histamine guidelines of 50 parts per million in fish, while the sensors were found to detect histamine down to 3.41 parts per million. This validates that the sensors are more than sensitive enough to track food freshness and safety.

Highways contractor Amey and its client Kent County Council will be testing Gipave, an Italian graphene-based asphalt supermodifier said to extend pavement life.

The trial is taking place as part of the Association of Directors of Environment, Economy, Planning & Transport (ADEPT) Smart Places Live Labs programme funded by the Department for Transport of the UK.

The Swedish graphene manufacturer 2D fab has announced that its new industrial-sized volume production plant has opened. Apart from increased production capacity, the new plant is said to be more energy-efficient and enables a consistent graphene quality.

This news comes about year and a half after 2D fab's decision to expand the production capacity, due to its vision of growing demand for graphene. The new plant increases 2D fab’s production capacity to ten tons of graphene per year.

Collaborative research between Flinders University's Institute for NanoScale Science and Technology and the Centre for Health Technologies at the University of Technology Sydney has used VFD technology to enable the preparation of a new generation of aggregation-induced emission dye (AIE) luminogens using graphene oxide (GO).

Traditional fluorescent dyes to examine bacteria viability are toxic and suffer poor photostability, so researchers are constantly looking for alternatives. Using the VFD to produce GO/AIE probes with the property of high fluorescence is said to be very promising—with the new GO/AIE nanoprobe having 1400% brighter fluorescent performance than AIE luminogen alone.

The MULTIMAL research project is developing a small device that can be used to rapidly identify malaria parasites using saliva samples, without the need for lab equipment. MULTIMAL is one of eight projects exploring new uses for graphene with support from ATTRACT, a €20 million EU-funded, CERN-led consortium, which has awarded 170 grants worth €100,000 each for one-year proof-of-concept technology projects.

Today’s portable malaria testing kits are just above flipping a coin, because they are right only 60 percent of the time, says MULTIMAL principal investigator Jérôme Bôrme. The disease, which the World Health Organisation says killed 435,000 people in 2017 (nearly all of them in Africa), is caused by five species of parasite that can be easily identified in a lab. But treating the disease in remote towns and villages is difficult because of the lack of reliable portable testing kits, explains Bôrme, MULTIMAL’s principal investigator and staff researcher at the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory in Portugal, which runs MULTIMAL in collaboration with the University of Minho.