Graphene videos - Page 6

A few weeks ago we visited the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in Teddington, UK. We were given a tour of the facilities, the graphene labs and met with several key researchers and the business development team. The NPL is the UK's national measurement institute, and is a world-leading measurement standards institute - and certainly one of the leading institutes in the field of graphene metrology.

The NPL's facilities are very impressive, it's a beautiful campus set in the lovely town of Teddington - about half an hour by train from central London. The research facilities and laboratories were very well equipped and we pleasantly surprised to find out how nice and hospitable the researchers were. It was great to see so many graphene related activities at the NPL.

A couple of weeks ago we visited Haydale's headquarters and production floor in Ammanford, Wales, UK. Here are our impressions following this visit, the meeting with Haydale's management and a visit to the production floor and processing rooms.

First of all, let's clear up a common misunderstanding: Haydale is not a graphene producer. It buys graphene materials (from several sources) and uses its proprietary plasma process to improve the materials, make them more uniform in quality and tailor them to specific requirements. Haydale then uses these materials to create intermediate materials - inks, coatings, composite materials (and masterbatches) and 3D filaments. Haydale is working with customers to take these materials and use them in various graphene-enhanced products.

Researchers from the Israeli Technion University developed a novel and rapid method to optically visualize CNTs and graphene. The idea is that growing pNBA nanocrystals - which are optically visible on top of the CNTs or graphene sheets. This allows the crystals to be viewed by dark-field optical microscopy.

The pNBAs NCs can be easily removed - and the original material is not effected by this process. But it allows much easier study of graphene, and can also be used to aid production processes as it is a scalable, fast and cost-effective process. The video below shows how growing those NCs on carbon nanotubes makes the tubes visible.

Dongxu Optoelectronic Technology recently unveiled a graphene battery in Beijing, called G-King. The report out of China does not reveal how close the G-King battery is to mass production. It might be close, considering the stage show the company pulled off - and if so, it may be the world's first graphene battery.

The demonstrated graphene battery has a capacity of 4,800mAh, which is a typical capacity of laptop battery. The company showed the G-King's super-fast charging time. It only takes 13 to 15 minutes compared to several hours a conventional Lithium-Ion battery needs. That's 10 to 20 times faster. Dongxu Optoelectronic Technology says that the G-King graphene battery supports 3,500 charge and discharge cycles - around 7 times higher than Li-Ion batteries.

Researchers at Exeter used their GraphExeter material (compressed ferric chloride molecules between two sheets of graphene) to bring flexible electronics a step closer. GraphExeter allows for a new system that is a better conductor of electricity than graphene, and can be used to make large, flat and flexible lighting.

The main advantage is that the material is capable of high luminosity, reportedly beating comparable products by 50% greater brightness. One limitation with the current developments in flexible screens is that the brightness that can be achieved decreases as the screen becomes larger, but GraphExeter is said to overcome this.

A Chinese company (possibly called Interim, though details are sketchy) presented a fully bendable smartphone with a graphene-based screen during a trade show at Nanping International Conventional Center in Chongqing. The bendable touch display weighs 200g, and the smartphone can be worn around the wrist. The display is rumoured to be an OLED display with a diagonal of 5.2 inches.

There are no substantial details about the company behind the graphene smartphone and what the plans are to bring the graphene phone to market. It's not clear what the meaning of a "graphene-based" display is, in this case. While graphene can theoretically be used to make light emitting devices, it's highly unlikely that this is the case here. My guess would be that this is a flexible OLED display (could also be a flexible LCD, but that's unlikely) with a graphene-based touch panel.

The Graphene Pavilion at the 2016 MWC included the ICFO's (Institute of Photonic Sciences in Barcelona, Spain) exciting stand, that showcased and demonstrated graphene-based technologies like a flexible and transparent light sensor and a fitness wearable.

Prof. Frank Koppens, Group Leader at the ICFO, stated that: "The sensors and wearables are working very well but we don’t have yet a plan to make a large number. Once a company decides to invest, this can rapidly change. So anything between 2 and 5 years is foreseeable."

Last week Barcelona hosted the Mobile World Congress trade show, and it was a very large and impressive conference - with over 100,000 visitors and thousands of exhibiting companies. This year the MWC included a graphene pavilion, organized by the ICFO and the Graphene Flagship, Europe's $1 billion research project initiative.

The Graphene Pavilion was very impressive, with several companies showcasing real graphene products and prototype devices, and also several research groups from leading Universities. The Pavilion consisted of 11 companies and 9 research centers - and you could see graphene materials, graphene supercapacitors (From Zap&Go, soon to hit the market), large graphene EMI shielding films (from GNext), graphene sensors and graphene-based RFID tags and antennas. In the photo below you can see an air quality prototype sensor made from graphene developed by Libre SRL (PiAndBi).

Scientists at Donghua University in China have found a way to cause tiny (0.8 to 6 centimeter) graphene oxide-based objects to move in specific ways using heat and infrared light. The work was inspired by origami, an art form based on folding paper.

In this work, traditional paper was replaced with two types of graphene sheets infused with hydrogen and oxygen compounds, resulting in graphene oxide and graphene oxide-polydopamine. The former does not react to water but the second does. To create origami type structures, the team infused the latter with water molecules than bonded the two types of sheets together—when heat or light was applied to the second type, it would cause the water molecules to be released, making the paper shrink slightly, which in turn would exert a force that would pull against the second type of sheet. This allowed for the creation of hinges or joints which could be employed on command, which made the objects programmable in a sense.

Graphene 3D Lab, the company focused on the development and commercialization of technologies which improve the capabilities of 3D printing, has released a video which shows the use of one of its conductive graphene filaments in a game controller. The filament can be used in 3D printing circuitry, capacitive touch sensors and electromagnetic and radio-frequency shielding: