Talga Resources has provided an update on the commercial progress of its graphene-enhanced silicon anode lithium-ion battery product Talnode-Si. Following encouraging early test results, further technical and commercial development of Talnode-Si has been underway at Talga’s facilities in Europe.

Results from this latest phase of development reportedly show continued success of Talga’s silicon anode approach which uses lower-cost metallurgical-grade silicon for a high-energy density anode with mass-producibility potential.

Researchers at Swinburne University of Technology recently teamed up with teams from National University of Singapore, Rutgers University, University of Melbourne, and Monash University, to develop a method to generate precisely controlled graphene microbubbles on a glass surface using laser pulses.

Schematic of optical setup for characterizing the GO microbubbles. Image from article

Microbubbles - around 1-50 micrometers in diameter - can have various applications like drug delivery, membrane cleaning, biofilm control, and water treatment. They've been applied as actuators in lab-on-a-chip devices for microfluidic mixing, ink-jet printing, and logic circuitry, and in photonics lithography and optical resonators. They also have great potential for other biomedical imaging and applications like DNA trapping and manipulation applications.

Today we published new versions of all our graphene market reports. Graphene-Info provides comprehensive niche graphene market reports, and our reports cover everything you need to know about these niche markets. The reports are now updated to October 2020.

The Graphene Batteries Market Report:

• The advantages using graphene batteries
• The different ways graphene can be used in batteries
• Various types of graphene materials
• What's on the market today
• Detailed specifications of some graphene-enhanced anode material
• Personal contact details into most graphene developers

The report package provides a good introduction to the graphene battery - present and future. It includes a list of all graphene companies involved with batteries and gives detailed specifications of some graphene-enhanced anode materials and contact details into most graphene developers. Read more here!

A research team led by the University of Washington recently reported that carefully constructed stacks of graphene can exhibit highly correlated electron properties. The team also found evidence that this type of collective behavior likely relates to the emergence of exotic magnetic states.

We’ve created an experimental setup that allows us to manipulate electrons in the graphene layers in a number of exciting new ways, said co-senior author Matthew Yankowitz, a UW assistant professor of physics and of materials science and engineering. Yankowitz led the team with co-senior author Xiaodong Xu, a UW professor of physics and of materials science and engineering.

Nanotech Energy has announced the debut of Nanotech EMI Armor Paint & Sheets, graphene powered coatings and films for electromagnetic interference (EMI) and radio frequency interference (RFI) shielding, as well as heat management.

The EMI Shielding line currently contains six products all of which are said to be highly conductive and provide excellent external EMI/RFI protection while also preventing internal EMI/RFI leaks. The products can be sprayed, brushed, rolled or dip-coated onto various surfaces, such as glass, plastic and metal depending on the specific product used.

The Graphene Flagship has been invited by the European Commission to create an experimental pilot line for graphene-based electronics, optoelectronics and sensors. This will be a unique experimental manufacturing facility, where European companies, research centers and academic institutions can produce novel devices based on two-dimensional (2D) materials on a pilot scale.

The goal of this endeavor is to demonstrate how to manufacture and scale up the production of devices based on 2D materials for market applications. This is a crucial step before graphene technologies can be transferred to full scale manufacturing.

Researchers at Chalmers University in Sweden have recently reported a facile and controllable anisotropic wet etching method that allows scalable fabrication of transition metal dichalcogenides (TMD) metamaterials with atomic precision. The team says that this new method has great potential for various layered structures like MoS₂ and WS₂ and graphene.

Process of etching hexagonal nanostructures in TMD materials. Image from article

They showed that materials can be etched along certain crystallographic axes, such that the obtained edges are nearly atomically sharp and exclusively zigzag-terminated. This results in hexagonal nanostructures of predefined order and complexity, including few-nanometer-thin nanoribbons and nanojunctions. Thus, this method enables future studies of a broad range of metamaterials through atomically precise control of the structure.

Graphene raw materials supplier First Graphene and UK-based specialist materials manufacturer M&I Materials have agreed to collaborate to develop an extended range of graphene-enhanced products.

Both companies are partners at Manchester’s Graphene Engineering and Innovation Centre (GEIC), a facility dedicated to the commercialization of graphene. The GEIC has played a big part in enabling this collaboration and has benefited both parties in terms of the close working relationship at the same location and the extensive facilities and support available on site.

Directa Plus recently stated that its revenue has trebled in the first half of 2020, rising from €2.81 million in the six months to the end of June 2020, up from €894,693 in the first half of last year.

This impressive rise in revenue took place despite the constraints imposed by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, or was perhaps even assisted by it - in case some of this revenue rise took place due to Directa's new Co-mask which has gone from concept to production and sale in just a few months.

Xiaomi recently launched a crowdfunding campaign for its new graphene-based smart heating mattress. The graphene layer in the mattress is used to generate heat, and according to the company the graphene enables uniform heating without the overheating or overcooling problems that are inherent in traditional heating mattress.

Xiaomi offers two kinds of graphene blankets - a single mattress at 299 Yuan (about $43) and a double one at 499 Yuan (about $73). The crowdfunding campaign has already attracted over 3,500 supporters and raised over 1.5 million Yuan.