Conductors - Page 5

Saint Jean Carbon, a carbon science company engaged in the design and development of carbon materials and their applications, recently received (along with Western University) a grant from the The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) towards the development of graphene-based systems with special magnetic properties.

The $100,000 grant will be used to cover the cost of the lab work, testing, material creation and all research associated costs. The company stated that it aims to use the funds to get beyond the lab and into working prototypes, scaled models and future commercial production. In addition, SJC hopes that "the results will play a big role in the medical field as well in energy storage for electric cars and green energy creation".

The Fraunhofer Institute FEP and other partners at EU GLADIATOR project developed a functional flexible OLED lighting device based on graphene electrodes. This device is 2 x 1 cm in size - much larger the previous prototype developed as part of that project last year.

The graphene electrodes were produced in a CVD-based process. The graphene was deposited on a copper film, covered with a flexible polymer carrier and then the copper was etched away.

Saint Jean Carbon, a carbon science company engaged in the exploration of natural graphite properties and related carbon products, has announced the development of hybrid graphene sheets with superconductivity. The work is the ongoing development of a number of different areas of research between Saint Jean and University of Western Ontario.

The hybrid graphene nanosheets were created by depositing yttrium barium copper oxide (YBCO) superconductor particles and were developed by using the matrix-assisted pulsed laser evaporation (MAPLE) method. With increasing irradiation time, the amount of YBCO nanoparticles deposited on graphene is increased. In addition, the microstructures and elemental composition of YBCO nanoparticle deposited on graphene sheet by the MAPLE process were studied in terms of particle size and shape as a function of the deposition time/irradiation time. It is noted that the shape and size of the YBCO nanoparticles are more uniform with increasing the deposition time. When it increases to 2 hours, the average diameter of the spherical YBCO nanoparticles deposited on graphene sheets is around 50 ± 10 nm. This study demonstrates that MAPLE is a suitable process for depositing inorganic superconductor nanoparticles on graphene sheets without additional chemical agents.

Researchers at the University of Sussex in England have found that a hybrid material consisting of silver nanowires that are linked together with graphene could be a strong contender in the battle to replace indium tin oxide as the transparent conductor in touch screen displays.

This material is said to be much cheaper to use since only a small amount of it is necessary in order to attain the properties of ITO. The graphene, according to the team, acts as a linker between the nanowires, which means that the network does not need to be dense. The graphene is deposited onto a sprayed network of nanowires by film deposition.

Researchers from Korea's ETRI Institute developed the world's first transparent OLED prototype that uses a graphene transparent electrode. ETRI demonstrated the new display at the SID 2016 tradeshow.

The prototype display was 26x26 mm in size, with a resolution of 155x60 (121 PPI). The display was a monochrome (orange) display. In the display on show, the graphene-based electrodes were deposited on the backplane of the display.

A collaborative team from Tohoku University and the University of Tokyo has designed a way to make graphene superconductive, which means electrons can flow through it with zero resistance. This can lead to significantly more efficient electronic devices, power lines, high-speed electronic devices and more.

While exciting, it is important to say that this demonstration of superconductivity in graphene occurred at a temperature of -269 degrees Celsius, and room temperature superconductivity is still far from attainable. However, this research does suggest that graphene could be used to build nano-sized, high-speed electronic devices.

The OLED Association, a trade group that promotes OLED technologies, published an interesting article in which they give predictions for the OLED market. The Association sees Samsung returning to the OLED TV market in 2017, and those upcoming OLED TVs will use several new technologies - including graphene-based transparent electrodes.

Last month we reported that researchers at Korea's ETRI developed transparent graphene-based electrodes for OLED panels. The researchers say that these new electrodes improve the transparency and "image quality" of OLEDs by 40 to 60 percent, compared to current silver-based electrodes. The researchers aim to continue the research and improve the performance of their electrodes.

Saint Jean Carbon, a publicly traded carbon science company, announced that it, along with their industry partners, will complete a prototype of a graphene-enhanced diamagnetic wire that will conduct energy at room temperature with superconducting level resistance. The process to build the wire is planned to take a few months, and the model will first be prototyped at 36 inches in length with a goal to measure the energy resistance under varying loads. This should, for example, give a better understanding on how a superconducting wire can greatly enhance the electricity transfer from an electric motor to a battery.

The design is based on relatively simple principles: the outer housing (casing) is a non-conductive rubber compound and the inner sleeve is a resin binder with a high concentration of diamagnetic graphene. The center core is a magnetic graphene wire and the diamagnetic force holds the center core in place while the energy passes along the path of the neutralized middle core.

Researchers at Japan's RIKEN have discovered that wrinkles in graphene can restrict the motion of electrons to one dimension, forming a junction-like structure that changes from zero-gap conductor to semiconductor back to zero-gap conductor. Moreover, they have used the tip of a scanning tunneling microscope to manipulate the formation of wrinkles, opening the way to the construction of graphene semiconductors by manipulating the carbon structure itself in a form of "graphene engineering."

The scientists were able to image the tiny wrinkles using scanning tunneling microscopy, and discovered that there were band gap openings within them, indicating that the wrinkles could act as semiconductors. Two possibilities were Initially considered for the emergence of this band gap. One is that the mechanical strain could cause a magnetic phenomenon, but the scientists ruled this out, and concluded that the phenomenon was caused by the confinement of electrons in a single dimension due to "quantum confinement."