July 2020

ZEN Graphene Solutions has announced it has commenced collaborations with research teams at a number of personal protective equipment (PPE) manufacturers to incorporate ZEN’s virucidal graphene ink into commercial products, including masks, gloves, gowns and other clothing following Zen’s promising results for an antiviral, graphene-based ink formulation from The University of Western Ontario’s ImPaKT Facility, biosafety Level 3 lab.

The company continues to optimize its proprietary formulation for dosage and delivery mechanism for highest antiviral impact. The next phase of testing is currently underway at the ImPaKT Facility and includes a preferred mask fabric coated in ZEN’s virucidal ink exposed to and tested against the COVID-19 virus.

First Graphene has announced a collaboration with the University of Warwick on a project to unlock the potential of graphene in thermoplastic systems.

First Graphene has secured an award under the Warwick Collaborative Post Graduate Research Scholarship Scheme, in conjunction with the Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG). WMG has established a successful model for collaboration between academia and the private and public sectors and has very strong links with world-leading industrial partners such as Jaguar Land Rover, who have located their advanced research group at the WMG campus.

Materials scientists at Rice University and the University of Pennsylvania have published an article calling for a collective, global effort to fast-track the mass production of 2D materials like graphene and molybdenum disulfide.

In their perspective article, journal editor-in-chief Jun Lou and colleagues make a case for a focused, collective effort to address the research challenges that could clear the way for large-scale mass production of 2D materials.

Researchers at University College London, Queen Mary University of London and Humboldt Universität zu Berlin have suggested a design for a hydrogen fuel cell, with graphene as a key component. The new research promises to address some of the roadblocks that have thus far hindered the development of this clean, non-toxic, renewable technology, thus opening up hydrogen fuel cells as a potential clean-energy breakthrough.

At the moment the US Department of Energy estimates that the cost of energy generated by hydrogen fuel cells is around $61 per kilowatt. The ultimate aim is to get this down to $30 per kilowatt. The scaling up in the production of graphene-coated nanoparticles suggested in the paper could help significantly in this quest. The team’s findings could also extend beyond the field of fuel cells, lending itself to some exciting technological applications.

Researchers at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering have created a graphene-based memory device which promises to increase data upload speed, extend smartphone battery life, and reduce data corruption. The team did this through a concept called the ferroelectric tunneling junction (FTJ).

This new memory device is part of a family known as non-volatile memory devices, meaning they can be unplugged and still retain their data, much like cell phone memory and USB flash drives. Unlike current FTJ devices, this device is comprised of asymmetric metal and semi-metallic graphene materials.

Researchers at Cranfield University and the University of Cambridge in the UK, Institut Pasteur in France, Silesian University of Technology in Poland and UniversIti Teknologi PETRONAS in Malaysia have found that at a particular size (below 1-micron lateral size), it is possible to achieve amphiphilic behaviour in graphene. This graphene flake attracts water at its edges but repels it on its surface, making it a new generation of surfactant that can stabilize oil and water mixtures.

In a statement, Krzysztof Koziol, Professor of Composites Engineering and Head of the Enhanced Composites and Structures Centre at Cranfield University said, This new finding, and clear experimental demonstration of surfactant behavior of graphene, has exciting possibilities for many industrial applications. We produced pristine graphene flakes, without application of any surface treatment, at a specific size which can stabilize water/oil emulsions even under high pressure and high temperature... Unlike traditional surfactants which degrade and are often corrosive, graphene opens new level of material resistance, can operate at high pressures, combined with high temperatures and even radiation conditions; and we can recycle it. Graphene has the potential to become a truly high-performance surfactant.

NanoGraf, an advanced battery material company, has announced that it has partnered with the U.S. Department of Defense to develop a longer-lasting lithium-ion battery, designed to provide U.S. military personnel with better portable power for the equipment they rely on to operate safely and effectively. Nanograf's graphene-wrapped silicon anode cells are hoped to significantly improve equipment runtime in the field.

The Department of Defense will provide NanoGraf with $1.65 million to develop silicon anode-based lithium-ion technology in a format compatible with all portable batteries, with a goal of enabling a 50-100 percent increase in runtime when compared to traditional graphite anode lithium-ion cells.

Cambridge Raman Imaging Limited (CRIL), a Frontier IP Group portfolio firm, has raised £250,000 to help commercialize its graphene-enabled scanning Raman microscope.

Cambridge Raman, a spin-out from the University of Cambridge, is jointly developing the technology with a spin-out from the Politecnico di Milano in Italy.

Researchers at Rice University design a "shield" made of graphene oxide, that helps particles destroy antibiotic-resistant bacteria and free-floating antibiotic resistance genes in wastewater treatment plants.

The labs of Rice environmental scientist Pedro Alvarez and Yalei Zhang, a professor of environmental engineering at Tongji University, Shanghai, introduced these microspheres wrapped in graphene oxide. Alvarez and his partners in the Rice-based Nanosystems Engineering Research Center for Nanotechnology-Enabled Water Treatment (NEWT) have worked toward quenching antibiotic-resistant "superbugs" since first finding them in wastewater treatment plants in 2013.

New study by Caltech shows that superconductivity in twisted bilayer graphene can exist away from the magic angle when coupled to a two-dimensional semiconductor

In 2018, researchers made the surprising discovery that when you layer two sheets of single-atom-thick graphene atop one another and rotate them by precisely 1.05 degrees with respect to one another, the resulting bilayer material takes on new properties: when the density of electrons in the material is increased through the application of a voltage on a nearby electrode, it becomes a superconductor—electrons can flow freely through the material, without resistance. However, with a slight change in electron density, the bilayer becomes an insulator and prevents the flow of electrons.