January 2022

Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the University of Science and Technology of China and Tianjin University have enhanced the energy storage capacity of graphene supercapacitors via solar heating.

In low temperature environments, the hindered diffusion of electrolyte ions can restrict the electrochemical performance of supercapacitors. Electrode materials with solar-thermal properties are expected to provide a new strategy to solve this problem. However, it remains a challenge to develop electrode materials with both excellent solar-thermal properties and high energy storage capacity.

G6 Materials has published its financial results for the quarter that ended on November 30, 2021. Revenues reached $320,000 (a 6% decrease from the last quarter), while the net loss decreased by 7% to $610,000.

G6M updates that it has recently secured an exclusive five-year supply agreement with an EU-based global microconnector company. G6 shall supply its products for a variety of smartcard applications. The company's subsidiary Graphene Laboratories had also recently entered into a Testing Services Agreement with the U.S. Army Engineer Research & Development Center to assess the ability of graphene oxide materials to solve environmental challenges through the adsorptive removal of contaminants.

Alpine 4 Holdings has formed RCA Batteries, a joint venture between its subsidiaries, RCA Commercial and Elecjet.

RCA Batteries will manufacture and distribute the ElecJet family of graphene batteries. Elecjet will continue to build electronic components, and hold intellectual property, including patents and software copyrights. Samuel Gong will be President of RCA Batteries while remaining as President of Elecjet.

UK-based Levidian, announced that it will start trialing its LOOP device together with National Grid. The device docks into existing infrastructure to strip carbon from gas flow, which could help businesses and national infrastructures to decarbonize.

The LOOP basically takes methane and produces pure graphene and hydrogen. This helps reduces greenhouse gas emission, and also produces high quality materials. National Grid aims to use both materials - the hydrogen for power generation, and the graphene to coat its pipe network to reinforce it.

Skeleton Technologies has announced its Round D3 with 37.6 million euros of equity investments. The Round was led by Taavet Hinrikus, from Taavet+Sten with Nidoco AB, EIT Innoenergy, Bengt Wahlqvist, co-founder of battery charging specialist CTEK, a group of founding team members of Adyen and others joining.

The investments will be aimed at further scale-up of supercapacitor production in Saxony, Germany, to meet customer demand and continuing the development of supercapacitor and curved graphene technology in new battery products.

First Graphene has reported a 94% growth in revenue at the end of the second quarter of the 2022 financial year. The continued growth and momentum puts the company in a strong position to achieve its 2022 targets.

The Company states that is has achieved several milestones over the last quarter. For example, the launch of PureGRAPH, a range of enhanced conductive coatings from nanotechnology developer Protectology, has opened the path to the lucrative European coatings market. The commercial agreement between Protectology will grow a range of PureGRAPH enhanced coatings marketed under the PROGRAPH® brand.

Researchers at The University of Manchester, MIT and other international collaborators have succeeded in observing the so-called Schwinger effect, an elusive process that normally occurs only in cosmic events. By applying high currents through specially designed graphene-based devices, the team - based at the National Graphene Institute - succeeded in producing particle-antiparticle pairs from a vacuum.

A vacuum is assumed to be completely empty space, without any matter or elementary particles. However, it was predicted by Nobel laureate Julian Schwinger 70 years ago that intense electric or magnetic fields can break down the vacuum and spontaneously create elementary particles.

It was recently reported that India’s first innovation center for graphene will be set up in Kerala by the Digital University Kerala (DUK), along with Centre for Materials for Electronics Technology (C-MET) in Thrissur, for an investment of Rs 86.41 crore (over USD$11.5 million). Tata Steel Limited is set to be the industrial partner of the center.

The chief investigators of the project, who will also lead it are Dr. AP James of DUK and Dr. A Seema of C-MET. The main collaborators include scientists from the National Graphene Institute, University of Manchester, and other industrial partners from around the world.

Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory have developed and tested a graphene coating for next-generation, electron-beam accelerator equipment - an especially challenging application of the technology. The team estimates that this success can have the potential for "Atomic Armor" in a range of applications.

"Accelerators are important tools for addressing some of the grand challenges faced by humanity," said Hisato Yamaguchi, member of the Sigma-2 group at the Laboratory. "Those challenges include the quest for sustainable energy, continued scaling of computational power, detection and mitigation of pathogens, and study of the structure and dynamics of the building blocks of life. And those challenges all require the ability to access, observe and control matter on the frontier timescale of electronic motion and the spatial scale of atomic bonds".

First Graphene (FGR) has entered into a collaboration agreement with Fosroc International to develop PureGRAPH, graphene-enhanced cement additives or grinding aids. The companies have entered a five-year collaboration agreement to facilitate the exchange of knowledge through research and development work.

Low doses of PureGRAPH-enhanced cement additives used in the final grinding phase of cement production can allow for up to 20% reduced clinker factor cement output while preserving or increasing cement performance.