Graphene Oxide: Introduction and Market News - Page 19

MITO Material Solutions has been awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant of $224,988 to develop a graphene oxide-based nano-additive that doubles the interlaminar toughness of composite materials utilized in aerospace, recreation, and automotive industries.

The main focus of this project is the development of new hybrid nanofillers based on Graphene Oxide (GO) and Polyhedral Oligomeric Silsesquioxane (POSS). These nanofillers can be added to epoxy/vinyl ester/polyester matrices through a "Master Batch" process to enhance the interlaminar fracture toughness of commercial composites.

Today we published new versions of all our graphene market reports. Graphene-Info provides comprehensive niche graphene market reports, and our reports cover everything you need to know about these niche markets. The reports are now updated to January 2018.

The Graphene Batteries Market Report:

• The advantages using graphene batteries
• The different ways graphene can be used in batteries
• Various types of graphene materials
• What's on the market today
• Detailed specifications of some graphene-enhanced anode material
• Personal contact details into most graphene developers

The report package provides a good introduction to the graphene battery - present and future. It includes a list of all graphene companies involved with batteries and gives detailed specifications of some graphene-enhanced anode materials and contact details into most graphene developers. Read more here!

Iowa State University researchers have created a new, low-cost, easily produced, graphene-based sensors-on-tape that can be attached to plants to provide data that was previously very hard to collect. This can help farmers to breed plants that are more efficient in using water, for example, but also open new possibilities for creating new sensors for biomedical diagnostics, for checking the structural integrity of buildings, monitoring the environment and, after appropriate modifications, for testing crops for diseases or pesticides.

The tiny graphene sensors that can be taped to plants, and the researchers have dubbed it a plant tattoo sensor. The plant sensors have been successfully tested in lab and pilot field experiments. The graphene-on-tape technology in this study has also been used to produce wearable strain and pressure sensors, including sensors built into a smart glove that measures hand movements.

Scientists at The University of Manchester have reported the development of a simple and cost-effective method to manufacture graphene-based wearable electronic textiles on an industrial scale. The new method could allow graphene e-textiles to be manufactured at commercial production rates of 150 meters per minute, the team said. Our simple and cost-effective way of producing multi-functional graphene textiles could easily be scaled up for many real-life applications, such as sportswear, military gear, and medical clothing, said the researchers.

The team reversed the previous process of coating textiles with graphene-based materials; Traditionally, the textiles are first coated with graphene oxide, which is then converted into its functional form of reduced graphene oxide. Instead, the researchers first reduced the graphene oxide in solution, and then coated the textiles with the reduced form.

Swinburne researchers have received 3.45 million AUD (around $2.64 USD) in funding to continue work on a project investigating energy storage alternatives using graphene oxide. Swinburne will receive the grant as part of the Cooperative Research Centres Projects (CRC-P) funds commissioned by the Australian Government. The Swinburne Centre for Micro-Photonics is collaborating with Flinders University as well as First Graphene and Kremford.

The ‘High performance energy storage alternative to lithium ion batteries’ project is working towards creating commercially viable and chemical-free batteries using graphene. This involves the production of a graphene oxide-based supercapacitor. Swinburne Researchers are developing the Bolt Electricity Storage Technology (BEST) battery a graphene oxide-based supercapacitor offering high performance and low-cost energy storage.

The NGI at The University of Manchester and William Blythe have announced the start of a new joint research project, targeting the development of high capacity graphene-related materials for use in the electric vehicle market.

The project will combine William Blythe’s core capabilities in inorganic synthetic chemistry and their graphene-oxide with the specialist experience of The University of Manchester’s Professor Robert Dryfe and the energy storage team at the NGI.

Researchers at the National Graphene Institute and School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science at The University of Manchester have developed an ultra-thin membrane using graphene-oxide sheets, that were assembled in a way that they were able to completely remove various organic dyes, dissolved in methanol, which were as small as a nanometre. This is exciting as GO membranes were once thought to be permeable only to aqueous solutions, but the researchers developed a new form of graphene oxide membrane that can filter organic solvents.

In the newly developed ultrathin membranes, graphene-oxide sheets are assembled in such a way that pinholes formed during the assembly are interconnected by graphene nanochannels, which produces an atomic-scale sieve allowing the large flow of solvents through the membrane. When used to filter Cognac and whisky, the membrane permitted alcohol to pass through but trapped the larger molecules that gives the whisky its color. Professor Nair, which led the group, said that "the clear whisky smells similar to the original whisky but we are not allowed to drink it in the lab, however it was a funny Friday night experiment!

Zenyatta Ventures has announced the commencement of a collaborative research project with Dr. Takashi Kuboki at Western University to develop an advanced plastic (polymer composite) using Zenyatta graphene (or graphene-oxide) derived from Albany high-purity graphite deposit.

Zenyatta sees a potential for such enhanced polymer composite materials to be attractive to the automotive, aerospace and construction industries that seek lightweight materials with added strength, electrical and thermal properties. This new project may expand Zenyatta's business opportunities as a graphene nanomaterial supplier for the polymer composite markets.

Researchers at the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) are developing a water treatment system based on a mix of graphene oxide and a byproduct made from shrimp shells.

The ERDC team’s breakthrough was the ability to scale the membranes from the inch and a half diameter membranes other labs throughout the world are working on, to sheets stretching up to two feet long with the potential of making them as big as needed.

Researchers from Italy’s University of Florence have found that graphene oxide could significantly improve the efficiency of perovskite solar cells. The researchers have shown how the introduction of graphene and graphene oxide doped with lithium atoms (GO-Li) into a perovskite-based cell may increase its conversion efficiency, as both the carrier recombination dynamics and the defect density of the perovskite are considerably improved.

The scientists used graphene doped mesoporous TiO2 (G+mTiO2) with the addition of a lithium-neutralized graphene oxide (GO-Li) interlayer as ETL. They found that the carrier collection efficiency is increased by about a factor two with respect to standard mTiO2.