May 2021

Australian battery casing company, Vaulta, has announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding with Braille, Grafoid and Focus Graphite.

Vaulta signed the MOU to pair its innovative graphene-based cell casing technology with three Canadian companies focused on battery energy solutions and the development of creative applications for graphene. Vaulta will work with Braille Energy Systems Inc. (BESI), Focus Graphite Inc. and Grafoid Inc. to conduct market analysis to identify new sectors of interest and co-developed projects.

A sponsored post by Graphex Technologies

Climate change is a serious threat to the ecosystem and the planet, and many efforts are made in order to achieve a zero-carbon footprint and limit global warming. Fighting climate change would have to involve a substantial shrinkage in greenhouse gas emissions and a paradigm shift towards developing and using more eco-friendly, renewable energy technologies.

Spherical graphite by Graphex

When contemplating a 'greener' future, it seems inevitable that the transportation sector would have to play a decisive role in achieving a carbon-neutral society, and the next few years are expexted to mark a shift towards electric vehicles. However, existing electric vehicles face great challenges in terms of public acceptance, as concerns regarding driving range per charge and vehicle price linger among consumers. To become the predominant technology, electric cars would have to replace the current large and bulky batteries with more advanced and efficient ones that would improve performance and bring down costs.

Construction company Nationwide Engineering has reported the laying of the world's first graphene-enhanced concrete slab engineered for sustainability in a commercial setting.

Team from The University of Manchester and Nationwide Engineering laying the world's first engineered graphene concrete in a commercial setting. Credit: The University of Manchester/Nationwide Engineering

The venue for this innovation milestone is located a couple of miles east of the ancient monument of Stonehenge - the new Southern Quarter gym in Amesbury's Solstice Park, owned and run by military veterans and due to open in summer 2021. This enterprise has been made possible by a joint venture between Nationwide Engineering and The University of Manchester.

Researchers at the Nanoscience Center of the University of Jyväskylä have demonstrated how an experimental technique called optical forging can make graphene ultrastiff - increase its stiffness by several orders of magnitude. Graphene typically has ultrasmall bending modulus, but the research group at the University of Jyväskylä has demonstrated how to make graphene ultrastiff using a specifically developed laser treatment. This stiffening opens up whole new application areas for graphene.

Top - Atomic force microscopy images of the suspended graphene drum skin before and after optical forging. Bottom - analogue presentation of how a material can become stiffer when it is corrugated. (Image: University of Jyväskylä)

The same group has previously prepared three-dimensional graphene structures using a pulsed femtosecond laser patterning method called optical forging. The laser irradiation causes defects in the graphene lattice, which in turn expands the lattice, causing stable three-dimensional structures. Here the group used optical forging to modify a monolayer graphene membrane suspended like a drum skin and measured its mechanical properties using nanoindentation.

Researchers from the University of Surrey have designed a new method that enables common laboratory scanning electron microscopes to see graphene growing over a microchip surface in real time.

This discovery could create a way to control the growth of graphene in production factories and lead to the reliable production of graphene layers. The new technique not only produces graphene sheets reliably but also allows to use catalysts that reduce growth times from several hours to only a few minutes.

Two recent studies by a collaborative team of scientists from two NCCR MARVEL labs have identified a new type of defect as the most common source of disorder in on-surface synthesized graphene nanoribbons (GNRs).

Combining scanning probe microscopy with first-principles calculations allowed the researchers to identify the atomic structure of these so-called "bite" defects and to investigate their effect on quantum electronic transport in two different types of graphene nanoribbon. They also established guidelines for minimizing the detrimental impact of these defects on electronic transport and proposed defective zigzag-edged nanoribbons as suitable platforms for certain applications in spintronics.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has announced that a project it has backed has yielded a combined temperature and magnetism sensor. Any time we can do more with less is a good result for the space sector, notes ESA materials specialist Ugo Lafont. Thanks to the unique properties of graphene, our prototype bi-functional sensor can measure magnetic field strength at the same time as taking temperature readings.

Prototypes of bi-functional sensor by ESA and AGP image

And our tests show the sensor operates reliably from room temperature down to 12 degrees Kelvin. Normally separate temperature sensors are required to accurately measure such wide temperature ranges, right down to cryogenic levels.

Cardea Bio, a biotech company integrating molecular biology with semiconductor electronics, has signed a commercial partnership with Scentian Bio. Scentian is an expert in synthetic insect odorant receptors (iORs), one of nature’s ways of detecting and interpreting smells.

The partnership will enable Scentian to use a customized Cardean chipset, built with graphene-based biology-gated transistors, which will allow Scentian to manufacture a bio-electronic tongue/nose tech platform.

Applied Graphene Materials has announced that its partnership with Tru-Tension has resulted in the launch of a new detailing spray enhanced with AGM’s graphene nanoplatelet technology.

UK-based Tru-Tension designs and manufactures products for biking enthusiasts, that include tools, cleaning products, lubricants and accessories. Following in-house research and testing, the manufacturer claims that the new formulation enhanced with AGM’s industry-leading Genable® graphene dispersion technology delivers extended performance benefits.

An international research team, led by the University of Cologne, has succeeded in connecting several atomically precise graphene nanoribbons to form complex structures. The scientists have synthesized and spectroscopically characterized nanoribbon heterojunctions, and were able to integrate the heterojunctions into an electronic component. In this way, they have created a novel sensor that is highly sensitive to atoms and molecules.

"The graphene nanoribbon heterojunctions used to make the sensor are each seven and fourteen carbon atoms wide and about 50 nanometres long. What makes them special is that their edges are free of defects. This is why they are called "atomically precise" nanoribbons," explained Dr. Boris Senkovskiy from the Institute for Experimental Physics. The researchers connected several of these nanoribbon heterojunctions at their short ends, thus creating more complex heterostructures that act as tunneling barriers.