Graphene Flagship: Europe's $1 billion graphene initiative - Page 8

The Graphene-Info team attended this year's Graphene Week, organized by the Graphene Flagship in San Sebastian, Spain, 10-14 September 2018. The event attracted over 600 visitors from all over the world, and was extremely well organized.

While the talks and lectures were clearly scientifically-oriented, the commercial angle was also evident and many institutes and companies were there to show their recent product advancements. The Graphene Flagship's booth held a fascinating array of exhibits: graphene-enhanced retina and neural prosthesis (biomedical devices) by the ICN2 as a part of Braincom, Airbus' graphene composite for the leading edge of the tail of the Airbus A350, Nokia, Ericsson and AMO's graphene-based modulators and photodetectors for optical communications, a prosthetic robotic hand enhanced with graphene nerve sensors by the IIT, University of Cambridge's insole graphene-based pressure sensor and more.

Researchers affiliated with the Graphene Flagship have shown that integrated graphene-based photonic devices offer a unique solution for the next generation of optical communications. Researchers in the initiative have demonstrated how properties of graphene enable ultra-wide bandwidth communications coupled with low power consumption to radically change the way data is transmitted across the optical communications systems. This could make graphene-integrated devices the key ingredient in the evolution of 5G, the Internet-of-Things (IoT), and Industry 4.0.

"As conventional semiconductor technologies are approaching their physical limitations we need to explore entirely new technologies to realize our most ambitious visions of a future networked global society," explains Wolfgang Templ, Department Head of Transceiver Research at Nokia Bell Labs in Germany, which is a Graphene Flagship partner. "Graphene promises a significant step in performance of key components for optical and radio communications beyond the performance limits of today's conventional semiconductor-based component technologies." Paola Galli, Nokia IP and Optical networks Member of Technical Staff, agrees: "Graphene photonics offer a combination of advantages to become the game changer. We need to explore new materials to go beyond the limits of current technologies and meet the capacity needs of future networks."

The Graphene Flagship was launched in 2013 with the mission to take graphene and related layered materials from academic laboratories to the market, revolutionize multiple industries and create economic growth and new jobs in Europe. Five years later, the Flagship consortium has reported that it successfully completed the Core1 phase and is progressing towards more applied phases. It is reportedly on its way to achieving its objective of developing the high potential of graphene and related 2D materials to the point of having a dramatic impact on multiple industries.

The Reviewing Panel thoroughly examined the results obtained in this Core1 phase and concluded that for many topics, there has been a clear transformation of the activities, moving from individual research projects to genuine collaboration towards larger goals exactly what a Flagship project should aim for. Nearly all milestones and key performance indicators have been met, often exceeding expectations. There are numerous examples of significant scientific and/or technological achievements, with clear progress beyond the state of the art. The Work package on Photonics and Optoelectronics led by ICREA Prof. at ICFO Frank Koppens was recognized as one of the closest to being brought into industrial exploitation due to its significant potential for both scientific breakthrough and innovation.

Organised by the Graphene Flagship, Graphene Week is the annual gathering for graphene technology leaders. The Graphene Flagship is organizing an ambitious program this year that includes invited talks and keynote speakers, as well as a growing industrial exhibition.

The Graphene-Info team will attend this exciting event, which takes place on September 10-14, in San Sebastian, Spain. If you want to meet us during the event, let us know!

Graphene Flagship Partners at the National Inter-University Consortium for Telecommunications (CNIT) in Italy, IMEC in Belgium and University of Cambridge in UK have designed and tested a graphene-based phase modulator that reportedly outperforms existing silicon-based ones.

Modern optical data and telecommunications employ phase modulators to increase the amount of data relayed and data rate efficiency, i.e. the speed at which information is relayed. Phase modulators traditionally work by grouping several bits of information into fewer symbols, or packets, reducing the overall size, or spectral width. The smaller the spectral width, the higher the data rate efficiency. However, this efficiency is reaching a maximum with silicon based devices, and so a novel solution is needed to bridge the gap between the increase in demand for data and the efficiency in transmitting it.

Partners of the European Project 'Graphene Flagship' at the University of Strasbourg and CNRS (France), along with an international team of collaborators, created new 'switches' that respond to light. The team combined light-sensitive molecules with layers of graphene and other 2D materials to create new devices that could be used in sensors, optoelectronics and flexible devices.

The researchers designed a molecule that can reversibly undergo chemical transformations when illuminated with ultraviolet and visible light. This molecule (a photoswitchable spiropyran) can be then attached to the surface of materials like graphene or molybdenum disulfide, thus generating an atomically precise hybrid macroscopic superlattice. When illuminated, the whole supramolecular structure experiences a collective structural rearrangement, which could be directly visualized with a sub-nanometer resolution by scanning tunneling microscopy.

Researchers associated with the Graphene Flagship have reported overcoming the theoretical limiting performance of membranes in gas separation. This collaborative research from CNR, University of Bologna and Graphene-XT has potential applications in hydrogen purification and carbon capture and storage.

The team explains that polymer-based membranes for gas separation have a trade-off between high gas permeability and high gas selectivity, the so-called Robeson upper bound. By combining individual graphene oxide sheets with polymer spacers, in a sandwich style structure, the researchers have been able to overcome this limit, separating gas quickly and efficiently.

The following is a sponsored message by The Graphene Flagship

Each year the Graphene Flagship organizes a school to educate students and early career researchers interested in graphene and its applications.

"The goal of the school is to bring together students working on related areas of research with experienced scientists from academia and industry," says Graphene Flagship Director Jari Kinaret.

​Researchers from the Graphene Flagship have developed a new technique to map the conductivity of graphene on the large scale. This technique uses the non-destructive, fast and highly accurate terahertz time-domain spectroscopy and has exciting ramifications for the graphene production environment.

Large scale metrology is going to be an integral part of industrialization, said Professor Peter Bøggild, Group Leader at DTU Nanotech and the paper’s lead author, We will never get real quality without quality control.

Researchers at the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO) in Spain, along with other members of the Graphene Flagship, have reached what they consider to be the ultimate level of light confinement - being able to confine light down to a space of one atom. This may pave the way to ultra-small optical switches, detectors and sensors.

Graphene keeps surprising us: nobody thought that confining light to the one-atom limit would be possible. It will open a completely new set of applications, such as optical communications and sensing at a scale below one nanometer, said ICREA Professor Frank Koppens at ICFO, who led the research.