Carbon nanotubes and graphene - properties, applications and market - Page 9

Aixtron announced today that they have sold a new 4" BM Pro PECVD system for the Institute of Metal Research (IMR) at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The IMR will use the system to produce carbon nanotubes and graphene. The order was placed in the first quarter of 2012 and the system will be delivered in the third quarter of 2012.

Aixtron announced today that Osaka University in Japan placed an order for a 4" AIXTRON BM Pro system. The University will use the new equipment to produce carbon nanotube (CNT) and graphene structures for bio-sensors. The aim is to combine graphene field-effect transistors with organic chemicals, such as antibodies, antigens and aptamers to allow electrical detection of specific proteins. The BM Pro system will also be used to produce carbon nanotubes for micro-electromechanical-systems (MEMS) and energy storage devices.

Researchers from Stanford discovered that dipping super capacitor electrodes in a carbon nanotube solution can increase the charging capacity by up to 45%. The electrodes were made by a composite graphene and manganese oxide, and it turns out that the thin coating of more conductive material greatly boosted the capacitance of the electrodes.

Researchers from the National Institute for Materials Science managed to dramatically increase the energy density of supercapacitors - using a new electrode in which graphene nanosheets are stacked in a layered structure with carbon nanotubes sandwiched between the graphene layers.

The researchers designed and developed a graphene-based composite structure, in which graphene is used as the base material of the capacitor electrodes and carbon nanotubes (CNT) are inserted between the graphene sheets. In this structure graphene offers a far larger specific surface area (2630 m2/g) than the conventional materials and the CNTs function as spacers as well as conducting paths to enable adsorption of a larger quantity of electrolyte ions on the graphene surface. With this graphene-CNT composite as the capacitor electrodes, Professor Tang has obtained a high energy density of 62.8 Wh/kg and output power density of 58.5 kW/kg using organic electrolyte. By using an ionic liquid as the electrolyte, they have achieved an energy density of 155.6 Wh/kg, which is comparable to that of nickel metal hydride batteries.

Scientists from The University of Nottingham, UK, developed a new self-assembly based method to create sulphur-terminated graphene nanoribbon within a single-walled carbon nanotube. The team have demonstrated that carbon nanotubes can be used as nanoscale chemical reactors and chemical reactions involving carbon and sulphur atoms held within a nanotube lead to the formation of atomically thin strips of carbon, known as graphene nanoribbon, decorated with sulphur atoms around the edge.

These ribbons have some interesting physical properties and they are suitable for applications in electronic and spintronics devices - more so than 'regular' graphene.

Aixtron announced that Korea's Pusan National University (PNU) purchased an AIXTRON 4-inch Black Magic PECVD system. The system will be used for the production of graphene and carbon nanotubes - for research on renewable energy devices. The system was already installed at Pusan's National Core Research Center (NCRC).

Professor Kwang-Ho Kim explains that their reserach focuses on developing novel hybrid structures containing CNT and Graphene which utilize the unique physical and electronic properties of these materials. These structures are applied in electronic devices such as solar cells and sensors.

The following article was sent to us by Corey McCarren and Elena Polyakova from Graphene Laboratories, discussing carbon nanotubes commercialization woes, and how it relates to Graphene:

After the Nobel Prize was awarded for the research of graphene in October 2010, the material has occupied the headlines of all technology-related media. Graphene is already positioned as the next big thing for many technologies, such as computers, displays, biosensors, and flexible electronics, to name a few. It might be the right time to look back to 2001 when carbon nanotubes (closed rolls of graphene) were the darlings of the day, and headlines were full of promises of their bright future. Today, in 2011, most of these expectations were not realized.

Aixtron today announced an order for one Black Magic deposition system from Purdue University’s Birck Nanotechnology Center in West Lafayette, IN, USA. The order is for a 2 inch wafer configuration system for the deposition of carbon nanomaterials and high-k oxides by atomic layer deposition (ALD). The order was received in the fourth quarter of 2009 and the system will be delivered in the second quarter of 2010.

Associate Professor Peide Ye of Purdue University comments, The Black Magic CVD/PECVD platform is vital to our ongoing advanced CMOS device characterization research projects. This first-of-a-kind dual-configuration CVD system will allow us to not only to carry out CNT and graphene deposition but also to prepare high-k oxides by ALD in-situ. Having this unique capability at Birck means that we will be able to optimise carbon/oxide-based materials for the next-generation device channels. The advantage of preparing the oxide in-situ directly after channel growth is that it potentially eliminates contamination and trapped charge, leading to cleaner channel/oxide interfaces and better device performance.

Aixtron announced today that it has received a purchase order for a 6" Black Magic Plasma Enhanced CVD (PECVD) system for graphene and carbon nanotube (CNT) growth from the University of California (UCSB).

This combined thermal CVD and plasma enhanced CVD tool is planned to be delivered in first quarter 2010 to Professor Kaustav Banerjee, who directs the Nanoelectronics Research Lab at UCSB. The PECVD system uses unique rapid heating and plasma technologies that is used to produce various types of nanotubes, including low temperature, multiwall, singlewall and supergrowth nanotubes.

Researchers from Cornell have made a simple solar cell (photodiode) made from a single-walled carbon nanotube (a rolled up Graphene layer). The researchers created just one photodiode (one nanotube). They say that this is could lead to extremely efficient solar cells.

The nanotube is about the size of a single DNA molecule. They wired it between two electrical contacts, and close to two electrical gates, one negatively and one positively charged. The narrow, cylindrical structure of the carbon nanotube caused the electrons to be neatly squeezed through one by one. The electrons moving through the nanotube became excited (they used lasers on the nanotube) and created new electrons that continued to flow. The nanotube, they discovered, may be a nearly ideal photovoltaic cell because it allowed electrons to create more electrons by utilizing the spare energy from the light.