Researchers from Monash University, The University of Melbourne and RMIT University have shown a surprising way to protect atomically-thin electronics – adding vibrations, to reduce vibrations.

By ‘squeezing’ a thin droplet of liquid gallium, graphene devices are painted with a protective coating of glass, gallium-oxide. This oxide is remarkably thin, less than 100 atoms, yet covers centimeter-wide scales, making it potentially applicable for industrial large-scale fabrication.

Talga Group has provided an update on commercialization and customer qualification of Talnode®-Si, the Company’s proprietary silicon anode product for lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries. Talnode®-Si is a composite of graphite, graphene and ~50% silicon designed to significantly boost battery energy capacity when blended into existing commercial graphite anode materials.

Talga has been developing Talnode®-Si since 2018 at its facilities in Cambridge, UK, with commercial samples being produced at its pilot facility in Rudolstadt, Germany.

First Graphene has announced it has secured grant funding, in conjunction with the University of Manchester (UoM), for the next stage of research into commercializing graphene-enhanced supercapacitor materials.

Awarded through Innovate UK’s “Accelerated Knowledge Transfer to Innovate” scheme (AKT2I),
the grant will be used to fund a project intended to accelerate development and optimization of a
graphene-metal-oxide slurry for manufacturing high energy density supercapacitors.

Researchers from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2) in Spain have found that oral exposure to graphene oxide (GO) modulates the composition of the gut microbiome in adult zebrafish and can influence the crosstalk between the microbiome and immune system.

"This shows that we must factor the gut microbiome into our understanding of how nanomaterials affect the immune system," said the paper's corresponding author Bengt Fadeel, professor at the Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet. "Our results are important for identifying the potential adverse effects of nanomaterial and mitigating or preventing such effects in new materials."

Graphene Manufacturing Group (GMG) has provided an update on the ongoing investment in its Battery Development Centre (BDC), saying its board of directors has approved an additional A$600,000 (around USD$405,000) in capital expenditure to accelerate the progress of semi-automatic pouch cell prototype production for customer trials and Graphene Aluminium Ion (G+AI) Battery cell development.

GMG noted that it has also successfully increased its organizational capacity by attracting new staff experienced in pouch cell manufacturing, thereby enabling the acceleration of its battery performance optimization program.

NASA's SABERS (Solid-state Architecture Batteries for Enhanced Rechargeability and Safety) project, which has been going on for a few years under NASA’s “high risk, high reward” research program, aims to develop batteries with improved power density (preferably ones that could make electric flight feasible, which required around 480 watt-hour per kilogram).

Work taking place at NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, by an engineering team lead by Dr. Rocco Viggiano, is aiming to produce batteries that are powerful, light, fast to charge, scalable to any application, and extremely safe. The scientists are doing so by getting rid of the toxic and dangerous materials that make current batteries too inefficient and risky to put in a plane, for example. 

Researchers from the Rice University lab of chemist James Tour have reconfigured their "Flash Graphene" process to regenerate graphite anode materials found in lithium-ion batteries, removing impurities so they can be used again and again.

Flashing powdered anodes from commercial batteries recycles some of what the researchers called the “staggering” accumulation of waste they currently leave behind. In just a few seconds, a jolt of high energy decomposes inorganic salts including lithium, cobalt, nickel and manganese from an anode. These can be recovered by processing them with dilute hydrochloric acid.

Researchers at South China Normal University, Soochow University, Nanjing Tech University and  Macau University of Science and Technology have reported a new difunctional Li-S battery separator (CC-rGO/AB/PP) derived from a novel synthesis method under extreme pressure to promote more efficient Li-S batteries in a simple way.

Lithium-sulfur (Li-S) batteries theoretically have energy capacity far beyond lithium-ion batteries and have thus attracted much attention. However, the actual lifespan and conversion efficiency are significantly reduced by the shuttle effect in which lithium polysulfides (LiPSs) dissolve and penetrate to the anode during discharge and cause internal short-circuit. Although there are techniques to suppress the shuttle effect by the separator, most of them still have to sacrifice other performance indicators, such as the ability of lithium-ion transportation.

G6 Materials is launching new ready-to-use graphene-enhanced electrically-conductive adhesives. The G6 Epoxy materials are made from from graphene and silver, and these adhesives are ready-to-use, excellent for quick and easy applications.

G6 Materials has opened an Amazon shop, where you can find a broad range of innovative electrically conductive adhesives based on the company's proprietary fillers. The mixing procedure does not require any additional materials, keeping your workspace clean and tidy.

Researchers from China's Hebei University of Technology and The Pennsylvania State University in the U.S have combined MXenes and laser-induced graphene foam nanocomposite to improve the design and performance of triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) - power sources that can be used for various flexible electronic devices and wearables.

The popularity of wearable electronics has induced demand for their parts, including power sources such as TENGs. Such power sources must be both stretchy and high-performance, holding up under various deformation conditions over hours of use. The researchers created a material system that enables a TENG to be stretchy and able to perform on dynamic surfaces, such as the human skin or the leaf of a plant.