Ora Graphene, producer of free-standing graphene membranes, has announced the closing of its CAD$3 million (around USD$2.46 million) Seed financing round. The deal was led by Ecofuel Fund along with Export Development Canada (EDC), BDC Capital and certain members of New York Angels. Existing investors TandemLaunch, and BoxOne Ventures also participated in the round. In conjunction with the financing, the company was recently awarded a Sustainable Development Technology Canada grant to explore new areas of graphene applications for its technology.

Ora has produced what it refers to as 'the largest sheets of free-standing graphene demonstrating incredible new material properties for multi-purpose commercial utilization'. GrapheneQ membranes have already been shown to significantly improve sound quality and reduce energy consumption for global manufacturers of consumer electronics, with applications being developed for exciting new markets opportunities.

Sweden-based graphene materials technology specialist Graphmatech has announced an oversubscribed financing round that raised more than USD$10 Million for the Company (84.5 million SEK).

The Company stated that the investment round is fundamental to accelerate their technology development and launch graphene- based products to new markets.

Graphenglass, an innovative business focused on graphene-enhanced materials put into everyday use, has announced plans to open a plant in Spain to manufacture graphene-enhanced poles for power lines and communications.

The intention is to start up the first Graphenglass in a few motnhs, with a production capacity of around 15,000 poles and a modular capacity to be able to grow as the demand for these materials develops.

This is a sponsored post by The Graphex Group

The Graphex Group Ltd (GRFXY listed on OTCQX), a leading developer of graphene products and technologies and a manufacturer of spherical graphite and graphene technology for the renewable energy sector, has set up an indirect wholly-owned subsidiary, Heilongjiang Province Graphex New Material Technology Company Limited (HLJ Province Graphex) at Qitaihe City of the Heilongjiang Province of China.

Graphex's manufacturing facility for spherical graphite is strategically located in Heilongjiang Province, which is rich in high-quality natural graphite reserves. Once HLJ Province Graphex’s new production facility is fully online, the company expects to increase annual production by 30,000 tons to a total of 40,000 tons.

Directa Plus recently updated that NexTech Batteries, with which Directa established a partnership for developing next-generation batteries, has established an Italian subsidiary to explore the feasibility of producing cathode active materials in Italy, where Directa Plus' graphene technology will be an important component.

NexTech's subsidiary, called NexTech Italia SpA, will look at producing these materials using Directa Plus' graphene nanoplatelets for the manufacture of lithium-sulphur batteries throughout Europe, "in order to accelerate the technology's commercialization".

An international team of researchers, in an effort to produce cheap, defect-free graphene in larger quantities, have used GCS HPC resources to develop more efficient methods for producing graphene at an industrial scale.

Recent research indicates that using a liquid copper catalyst may be a fast, efficient way for producing graphene, but researchers only have a limited understanding of molecular interactions happening during these brief, chaotic moments that lead to graphene formation, meaning they cannot yet use the method to reliably produce flawless graphene sheets.

A leading Korean fiber producer called Huvis has reportedly begun to mass-produce graphene fibers.

The Company said that since graphene has such poor dispersibility, synthesis with PET (polyester) polymer is not considered easy. As a result, according to Huvis, most of the graphene fibers developed so far have either substandard graphene content, or the fiber is coated with a graphene material - which Huvis says makes them inferior (and is the reason that the graphene fibers available in the market are black or gray).

ZEN Graphene Solutions has announced that it has developed a stable diesel fuel additive, which increased the performance of diesel fuel by up to 10% in initial testing. Zen stated that these promising early results can be improved further through additional optimization work. ZEN has filed a provisional patent for this graphene-based fuel additive technology.

Greg Fenton, ZEN CEO commented: Energy and fuel are crucial to global economic prosperity, but also represent our biggest challenge from an environmental standpoint. With global market estimates for diesel fuel alone near $1 trillion, the size of the challenge to reduce emissions from this level of demand is massive, but so is the opportunity for novel solutions to help us be more efficient in our usage. Global challenges of this magnitude require a number of solutions and as a developer of nanotechnologies that help protect people and the environment we are excited to contribute with technology that is easily delivered into fuels to improve efficiency and create value for our shareholders in the process.

Paragraf recently introduced the GHS-C Graphene Hall Sensor (GHS), providing a viable approach to measuring magnetic field strengths of 7 Tesla (T) and above, at temperature extremes below 3 Kelvin (K).

Graphene Hall sensor enables the accurate measurement of high magnetic field strengths at cryogenic temperatures, increasing manufacturing throughput by quicker magnet mapping, replacing existing NMR probe mapping stages. The cryogenic sensor also allows measurements directly in cold bore, removing the need for room temperature inserts giving quality data and time savings.

Researchers at Graphene Flagship partners the University of Cambridge, UK, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, Empa-Swiss Federal Laboratories for Material Science and Technology, Switzerland and Graphene Flagship Associate Member the University of Exeter, UK, in collaboration with colleagues at CSIR-Advanced Materials and Processes Research Institute, India, National University of Singapore (NUS), A*STAR (Agency for Science, Technology and Research), Singapore, the University of Illinois and Argonne National Laboratory, US, have demonstrated that graphene can be used to produce ultra-high density hard disk drives (HDD). This can potentially lead to the development of ultrahigh density magnetic data storage: a big jump from the current one terabit per square inch (Tb/in²) to ten terabits over the same area.

HDDs contain two major components: platters and a head. Data are written on the platters using a magnetic head, which moves above the platters as they spin. The space between head and platter is continually decreasing to enable higher densities. Currently, carbon-based overcoats (COCs) layers used to protect the platters from mechanical damages and corrosion occupy a significant part of this spacing. The data density of HDDs has quadrupled since 1990, and the overcoats’ thickness was reduced from 12.5nm to about 3nm, which corresponds to one Tb/in². However, a COCs’ thickness of less than one nm would be required to make a significant improvement in data storage and reach a density of 10 Tb/in².