Graphene sensors: introduction and market status - Page 42

UK-based scientists from BAE Systems and the University of Surrey have discovered that patterned graphene sheets, inspired by moths’ eyes, could be used to capture light to produce energy or power sensors, and could also be used to develop smart wallpaper capable of powering Internet of Things applications.

The researchers claim that the newly developed material is the most light-absorbent substance for its weight developed to date, and drastically improves the efficiency of traditional graphene. They explain that graphene typically absorbs just 2.3% of incidental light; However, their new version of the material could collect as much as 90% more waste light and heat to produce more energy. The difference is a new technique which grows graphene around a textured metallic surface.

Researchers at Aalto University in Finland have fabricated an electricity-conducting material with promising properties by merging graphene and another 2D material, gallium selenide. The newly designed heterojunction could prove important for applications like sensors and wearable electronics and are, in comparison similar components that contain silicon, extremely thin. They also have impressive properties and the method used for their preparation is simpler than previous researched methods.

The component structure utilized elements from both lateral and vertical device design enabling the use of standard fabrication methods utilized in the semiconductor industry instead of laborious manual fabrication. The scientists explain that their inspiration comes from the existing silicon technology, aiming to bring out the state-of-the-art fabrication of 2D material devices from research labs to industry. In addition to the new and simpler way of manufacturing, the components have excellent characteristics like the on/off ratio, which is a critical parameter in electronics - over 10³.

The Centre for Process Innovation (CPI) has opened the doors of a Graphene Centre that aims to help companies develop, prove and commercialize products using graphene technologies. The Graphene Centre was funded by Innovate UK to support the commercial growth of the UK graphene industry and operates two specialized facilities at NETPark in Sedgefield, County Durham.

It has a dedicated laboratory for the functionalization and characterization of Graphene at a significant scale, which is produced by a variety of process routes. The second facility is based in CPI’s printable electronics facility and is focused on device development and testing covering membranes, sensors, energy and electronic applications.

Nanomedical Diagnostics, a biotech company that aims to create practical and scalable graphene biological field effect transistor (BioFET) products, announced the completion of its first AGILE (Automatic Graphene Immunolinked Electronic) biosensor Early Access Development Kit test with a lab at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.

The lab needed in vitro protein concentration measurements to validate its RNA data, but doing so using traditional protein analysis methods such as Western Blot was almost impossible due to the amount of tissue required to observe the protein. The AGILE platform reportedly provided quantitative, reproducible protein concentration data in one afternoon. One of the professors from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus declared that This technology is a game-changer for developmental biologists and that It opens the field of proteomics to a discipline that’s previously used just RNA data because it was cost-prohibitive to gain the quantity of protein needed for detection on traditional platforms.

Graphene has great potential to improve various components used in mobile devices, from transparent flexible screens to next-gen batteries, through durable phone casings, sensors, and powerful processors. Don't miss our new article on graphene for the mobile industry!

The MWC 2016 the world's largest event for the mobile industry held in Barcelona, Spain, will feature an entire pavilion dedicated to graphene in regards to the mobile world, an exciting precedent that emphasizes the growing attention that graphene is receiving in the technological world. The Graphene-Info team will attend the MWC 2016. If you wish to schedule a meeting with us, contact us here.

Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and UC Santa Cruz have demonstrated what might be the world's first 3D-printed graphene composite aerogel supercapacitor, using a technique known as direct-ink writing. The researchers suggest that their ultra-lightweight graphene aerogel supercapacitors may open the door to novel designs of highly efficient energy storage systems for smartphones, wearables, implantable devices, electric cars and wireless sensors.

The key factor in developing these novel aerogels is creating an extrudable graphene oxide-based composite ink and modifying the 3D printing method to accommodate aerogel processing. The 3D-printed graphene composite aerogel (3D-GCA) electrodes are lightweight, highly conductive, and exhibit excellent electrochemical properties. Supercapacitors using these 3D-GCA electrodes with thicknesses on the order of millimeters display exceptional capacitive retention (ca. 90% from 0.5 to 10 A·g−1) and power densities (>4 kW·kg−1).

Researchers at the University of Tokyo have used graphene to create a pressure sensor that remains accurate even when bent double. The researchers said it can be folded over a radius of just 80 micrometers, about the same as a human hair, and still measure pressure changes.

The sensor was created by adding carbon nanotubes and graphene to an elastic polymer, spinning these out to create nanofibres which were then entangled to form a lightweight, thin, transparent structure. It consists of organic transistors and a pressure sensitive nanofibre structure. The sensor itself is just 8 micrometres thick, yet can record pressure changes in 144 locations at once. These properties make it an ideal choice for clinical gloves and mean that breast cancer detection could become much faster and more reliable.

The University of Granada in Spain has launched the Graphene and 2D Semiconductors Laboratory, said to be one of the most complete public laboratories devoted to the manufacture and electric and structural characterization of graphene in Europe. This laboratory is supposedly comparable to that of the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom) or the one in the University of Stanford (United States).

The new facilities are located in the UGR Research Centre for Information Technology and Communication. With an investment of more than half a million euros, the new laboratory is devoted to the manufacture of all kinds and forms of graphene as well as the development of new graphene-based systems for electronic applications which include biosensors, electronic nanodevices for IoT (Internet of Things) applications, and flexible electronics, in addition to wearable devices.

Researchers at Rice University and the State University of Campinas in Brazil have found that random molecules scattered within layers of otherwise pristine graphene affect how the layers interact with each other under strain. The researchers, with flexible electronics in mind, decided to see how graphene oxide paper would handle shear strain, in which the sheets are pulled by the ends. Such knowledge is important for applications involving novel advanced materials, especially for making 3D structures from 2D materials, and some applications may include sensors, electronics and biomedical devices. 

The University of Manchester and The Masdar Institute of Science and Technology declared a collaborative research program covering three innovative projects in graphene and 2D materials: composites, sensors and membranes.

The projects will be led by faculty members from both research institutions, and will respectively explore the development of novel low-density graphene-based foams for various engineering applications, inkjet-printed graphene micro-sensors for energy and defense applications, and graphene-enabled ion exchange membranes for desalination.