Graphene sensors: introduction and market status - Page 24

University of Cambridge spin-out company, Paragraf, recently announced that it started producing graphene at up to eight inches (20cm) in diameter, large enough for commercial electronic devices.

Paragraf is producing graphene ‘wafers’ and graphene-based electronic devices, which could be used in transistors, where graphene-based chips could deliver speeds more than ten times faster than silicon chips; and in chemical and electrical sensors, where graphene could increase sensitivity by a factor of more than 30. The company’s first device will reportedly be available in the next few months.

Researchers at the National Graphene Institute (NGI) have created a method to produce scalable graphene-based yarn. Such e-textiles may have great potential for sportswear, healthcare, aerospace, and fitness applications, and so are attracting research attention worldwide.

Integrating textile-based sensors into garments in the manufacturing process is still time-consuming and complex. It is also expensive non-biodegradable, unstable, metallic conductive materials are still being used. Now, the NGI researchers have developed a process that has the potential to produce tonnes of conductive graphene-based yarn. It is possible to do this using current textile machinery without any addition to production costs. The produces graphene-based yarn is also said to be flexible, cheap, biodegradable, and washable.

New equipment developed in Brazil - the Solar-T - will be sent to the International Space Station (ISS) to measure solar flares. It is estimated that the Sun-THz, the name given to the new photometric telescope, will be launched in 2022 on one of the missions to the ISS and will remain there to take consistent measurements. The telescope contains graphene sensors that are highly sensitive to terahertz frequencies, able to detect polarization and be adjusted electronically.

The Sun THz is an enhanced version of the Solar-T, a double photometric telescope that was launched in 2016 by NASA in Antarctica in a stratospheric balloon that flew 12 days at an altitude of 40,000 m. The Solar-T captured the energy emitted by solar flares at two unprecedented frequencies: from 3 to 7 terahertz (THz) that correspond to a segment of far infrared radiation. The Solar-T was designed and built in Brazil by researchers at CRAAM together with colleagues at the Center for Semiconductor Components at the University of Campinas (UNICAMP). The new equipment will be the product of a partnership with the Lebedev Physics Institute in Russia.

The MWC 2019 is the world's largest event for the mobile industry, organized by the GSMA. It features a large exhibition, conference programme and networking opportunities. The Graphene Flagship partners with the MWC event and will host a graphene pavilion in the exhibition to showcase graphene materials and developers.

This year, one of the exhibitors in the Graphene Pavilion will be ICFO, showcasing prototypes like health monitoring wearables, next-generation tiny spectrometers and camera sensors.

Researchers from the University of Exeter have developed a new technique that could create a highly sensitive graphene biosensor with the capability to detect molecules of the most common lung cancer biomarkers.

The new biosensor design could revolutionize existing electronic nose (e-nose) devices, that identify specific components of a specific vapor mixture—like a person's breath—and analyze its chemical make-up to identify the cause.

Nanomedical Diagnostics, a leading manufacturer of graphene biosensors, has announced its corporate name change to Cardea.

The new name aims to reflect a significant expansion of the company's commercial activities, from primarily serving the pharmaceutical industry with ultra sensitive biosensor research tools, to opening its breakthrough biosensor platform for a broad set of healthcare and life science partners.

Graphenea, AMO and Emberion have been approved a European Innovation Council Fast Track to Innovation (FTI) project to help bring to market the G-IMAGER, a graphene imager based on graphene-on-wafer technology. The G-Imager is a short-wave infrared (SWIR) detector for applications in semiconductor inspection, sorting systems, spectroscopy hyperspectral imaging and surveillance.

A major obstacle for wider use of SWIR imaging products is the high cost of SWIR detectors, which are currently primarily manufactured with InGaAs technology. The high price is related to the complex manufacturing of InGaAs that also prevents increase of the detector production volumes. Now Graphenea Semiconductor SL, Emberion Oy, and AMO GmbH are tasked with constructing and marketing the G-Imager which will bring the core price down significantly, allowing market volumes to grow substantially.

Haydale has announced that it has signed a supply agreement to provide 76kg of its propriety piezoresistive ink to HP1 Technologies (HP1T) over an 18-month period. The value of the Supply Agreement was not disclosed.

HP1T creates bespoke flexible, printed, functionalized nano carbon-based sensor systems that can measure and collect high quality impact and pressure data. This newly signed supply agreement will see Haydale become HP1T's single supplier of functionalized nano carbon inks.

Finland-based Emberion recently announced its plan to present new products for visible light to shortwave infrared (VIS-SWIR) detection at SPIE Photonics West in San Francisco 5-7.2.2019. The showcased linear array is said to have been specifically designed for spectroscopy and use graphene as a charge transducing layer.

Emberion introduces a cost-competitive 512 × 1 pixel VIS-SWIR linear array sensor for visible to shortwave infrared spectral range. The sensor provides superior and consistent responsivity with very low noise over the broad (400 1800 nm) spectral range. The sensor comprises an array of 25 × 500 µm2 pixels monolithically built on a tailor-made CMOS readout integrated circuit. The ROIC contains an analog front-end, performs analog-to-digital conversion and signal pre-processing, implements an electric shutter, and provides digital data output with up to 16 bits resolution.

Researchers from ICN2, IMB-CNM, CSIC, IDIBAPS, and ICFO have designed a graphene-based implant able to record electrical activity in the brain at extremely low frequencies and over large areas.

The team explains that electrode arrays currently used to record the brain’s electrical activity are only able to detect activity over a certain frequency threshold. The new graphene-based technology presented in this work overcomes this technical limitation, allowing access to information found below 0.1 Hz, while at the same time paving the way for future brain-computer interfaces.