Carbon nanotubes and graphene - properties, applications and market - Page 8

Grafen Chemical Industries announced a new strategic alliance with Japan's Microphase to develop and commercialize CVD systems suitable for carbon nanotube (CNT) and graphene advanced research.

The partners aim is to offer compact and affordable CVD units for researchers that will enable efficient and reliable carbon nanomaterial synthesis. Towards this goal, Microphase will contribute its comprehensive CVD system product pipeline and know-how and Grafen will contribute its nanosystems expertise for specific research purposes in the region of Middle East, East Europe and Turkey.

Graphene platform, Cambridge Graphene Platform (CGP) and Nissha Printing will co-develop new electronic devices based on CGP s graphene ink technology. This alliance is expected to last three years.

Nissha will contribute its own printing technology to help develop CGP's inks. The company hopes to apply those new inks in the field of printed electronics. CGP and Graphene Platform will develop the inks themselves (graphene inks and other nanomaterials too) and will provide advice and consulting to Nissha.

Researchers from the Naval Research Laboratory at George Mason University report that graphene can replace Carbon Nanotubes (CNTs) in glucose sensors. The researchers use multilayered graphene petal nanosheets enhanced with platinum nanoparticles and enzyme glucose oxidase to monitor glucose concentrations found in saliva, tears, blood, and urine.

In past research, the researchers used CNTs with platinum nanoparticles to provide sensitive sensors. But these sensors were not stable as spacing of the nanoparticles on the CNTs significantly impacted the biosensor performance (as glucose diffusion is blocked when nanoparticles are too closely packed). In addition, they suffered from diffusion restrictions from neighboring nanoparticles.

Graphen Laboratories has become Moorfield's exclusive US distributer for their nanoCVD systems. Those new systems (launched in Europe in early 2013) enable easy, R&D scale production of CVD graphene and carbon nanotubes on a variety of substrates. The systems will be distributed by Graphene Laboratories via Graphene Supermarket.

The nanoCVD range consists of compact yet powerful units which include features such as low thermal mass heater stages, cold-walled reaction chambers and fully automatic controls enable rapid synthesis. The primary focus of these systems is in the academic sector, but Moorfield says that the nanoCVD systems have also proven attractive for industrial product development.

Researchers from the Politecnico di Milano and the University of Illinois developed a Gigahertz graphene ring oscillator (1.28 GHz). They say that this oscillator appears to be less sensitive to fluctuations in the supply voltage compared to both conventional silicon CMOS and oscillators made from CNTs. And the best carbon nanotube ring oscillator made to date operates at just 50 MHz.

The researchers say that graphene based amplifiers and mixers have already been demonstrated, and now their graphene based oscillators marks the final major analog electronics building block enabled by graphene.

Researchers from Rice University and the Honda Research Institute USA found that using graphene coating may enable carbon nanotube (CNT) growth on substrates which are normally unsuitable for this task.

A diamond for example conducts heat very well (five times better than copper) but it has a very low available surface area. Coating diamonds with graphene enables the growth of vertically aligned CNTs on the diamond - which creates a very efficient heat sink.

Researcher from Northwestern University developed a new way to amplify signals in hybrid graphene oxide and CNT electrochemical sensors. They use a process called Magneto-Electrochemical Immunoassay to achieve that.

The researchers designed the new hybrid material to correlate the available metal ions with analyte concentration. They used magnetic particles encapsulated in inert coating of silicon dioxide which were later coated with gold (gold is chemically inert and bio-compatible). This process is efficient, fast and cost-effective.

Lux Research released a new report (Is Graphene the Next Silicon ... Or Just the Next Carbon Nanotube?) on the graphene market, in which they forecast that the graphene market will grow to $126 million in 2020 (up from $9 million in 2012). It's an impressive growth - but the overall market will remain small. Most of the growth will come from graphene nanoplatelets (NGP) for the composites and energy storage applications. Graphene sheets will remain mostly in the lab.

According to Lux, the leading companies will be XG Sciences and Vorbeck Materials. Vorbeck is selling higher margin conductive inks, while XG supplies GNPs to corporate channel partners. Regarding newer startups (such as Graphene Technologies, Grafoid, National Nanomaterials, Xolve and Haydale), Lux says it is simply too early to tell.

Aixtron announced that China's Zhejiang University has ordered an AIXTRON BM 2-inch R&D system. The system (which was ordered in Q2 2012 and which will be delivered in Q4 2012) will be used for advance CNT and graphene research.

The BM R&D system features a high performance, fast response heater (1000° C/minute ramp rate) which enables complex process steps at different temperatures to be reproducibly implemented, such as catalyst pre-annealing, growth and post annealing.

Scientists from the University of Alberta and the National Research Council of Canada developed a new material, a 3D sponge-like graphene that can be used to make supercapacitor electrodes. The big advantage o f this new material is a high energy density at ultra high power densities - 7.1 Wh/kg at 48,000 W/kg. This could lead towards supercapacitors that can compete with Li-Ion batteries.

The new material was synthesized the sponge-like graphene out of multiwalled carbon nanotubes and cobalt phthalocyanine (PC) molecules that attach to nucleation sites in the nanotube "skeleton." Heating the material in a microwave for 20 minutes yielded graphite - which was then quenched with ice water to transform it into graphene flakes.