Graphene Oxide: Introduction and Market News - Page 35

Researchers from Australia's Anstro institute and Deakin University developed an efficient method to prepare porous and reduced graphene oxide. They say that this one-step, catalyst-free, high penetration and through-put technique offers for the first time a significant advantage over previously reported graphene oxide (GO) solution reduction mechanisms.

The new technique, which uses gamma irradiation, maintains the naturally densely packed morphology of GO bucky-papers without causing the dramatic exfoliation of the graphene layers caused by chemically reduced routes.

Researchers from Penn State University and Japan's Shinshu University developed a simple and scalable process to make strong, stretchable graphene oxide fibers. Those fibers can easily be scrolled into yarns that have strengths approaching that of Kevlar.

The new GO fiber is the strongest carbon fiber ever. The researchers believe that pockets of air inside the fiber keep it from being brittle. But those fibers can also be altered to make other useful materials. For example, removing the oxygen results in a fiber with high electrical conductivity, while adding silver nanorods increases the conductivity (to the same level as copper, while being much lighter than copper).

Researchers at Melbourne's Swinburne University developed a high-quality continuous graphene oxide thin film that has a record-breaking optical nonlinearity. The film may be suitable for high performance integrated photonic devices - useful for communication, biomedcine and photonic computing.

To create this new film, the researchers first spin-coated a graphene-oxide solution on a glass substrate. They then used a laser to create microstructures on the graphene oxide film to tune the nonlinearity of the material. Now they have a platform to fabricate optical components with desired nonlinearity - and all on the same graphene sheet without the need to integrate different components.

Researchers from UC Riverside discovered that graphene oxide nanoparticles are very mobile in lakes or streams - which means that they can cause negative environmental and health impacts. It turns out that in surface waters (where there is more organic material and less hardness), GO particles remain stable. But in groundwater, they tend to become less stable.

The researchers say that it is important to continue and study what happens when graphene materials get into the ground or water. They say that their lab is one of the few labs in the US that studies the environmental impact of graphene oxide.

Researchers from Korea's Sungkyunkwan developed new supercapacitors that can charge 1000 times faster than current graphene supercapacitors, while also having three times the energy capacity. To achieve this fast charge (and discharge) times,t he researchers used vertically aligning graphene oxide flakes.

The researchers created a graphene oxide film using a carbon nanotube, and then used cutting and heat treatment to develop the vertically-structured graphene electrodes. The researchers also inserted a VNT into the GO sheets and created regular patterned pores in the GO films. All this resulting in electrodes that is much faster than solid and vertically-structured graphene used in existing supercapacitors.

Thermene launched the second-generation Thermene product, which is a graphene-based high-performance thermal paste. Thermene is used to cool processor and video cards. The second generation product offers better performance (up to 12° Celsius cooler than the first generation) and is also cheaper by 25%.

The company says that the graphene-based paste handily beats the performance of Arctic Silver 5 and other standard thermal pastes by an average of 7° Celsius. The $14.99 product comes in a 3 mL syringe which improves the application experience, and one syringe of Thermene can be applied on up to 15 standard-size processors. The 2nd-gen Thermene is now shipping worldwide.

Researchers from the University of Southern California developed better performing and cheaper Li-Ion batteries. The researchers developed new cathode and anode materials.

The anode in the new batteries is made from Silicon, and they say that this anode is three times more powerful and longer lasting compared to a typical graphite anodes. The cathode they used is made from sulfur powder coated with graphene oxide.

Researchers from Australia and Ireland developed a flexible yarn made from graphene oxide. This strong, lightweight, highly conductive and high capacitance fiber may be a great material for wearable textiles.

The researchers report that the new yarns and fibers exhibit the best electrochemical capacitance ever - of as high as 410 F/g. To create the fiber, the researchers used a novel wet-spinning technique that can produce both GO and r-GO yarns of unlimited lengths. Those yarns are strong (with a Young’s modulus that is greater than 29 GPa), have a high electrical conductivity of around 2500 S/m and a very large surface area about 2600 m2/g for graphene oxide and 2210 m2/g for the reduced material.

UK's GS International (GSI) says that they have been chosen to be the graphite supplier for Norway's Graphene Batteries, a startup that develops graphene-based Li-Ion battery electrodes.

Graphene Batteries reportedly tested over 50 types of graphite before choosing GSI's graphite. GSI is offering high quality natural graphite at $16,000 per ton. GS International, together with the RS Group also aims to become a research partner to Graphene Batteries. The GS Group and GSI also plans to scale-up Graphene Oxide production soon.

Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and the Qingdao University of Science and Technology are studying drug delivery systems based on graphene oxide nanocomposite films. They found a way to consistently release anti-inflammatory drugs by applying electricity. Such a technique can be useful to treat epilepsy for example - when medication is "waiting inside the body" and will only be released when a seizure starts.

The researchers are using polymer thin films covered with GO nanosheets. They then coat it with an anti-inflammatory drug. This structure is then coated on an electrode. Applying electric current to the electrode causes it to release the drug. By changing the size and thickness of the GO sheets, the researchers can control how much drug is carried.