University of Manchester - Page 2

A research team, led by The University of Manchester, have reported a way to use light to accelerate proton transport through graphene, which could advance hydrogen generation technologies.

Proton transport is a key step in many renewable energy technologies, such as hydrogen fuel cells and solar water splitting, and it was also previously shown to be permeable to protons. The recent study has shown that light can be used to accelerate proton transport through graphene, despite the fact that it was previously thought that graphene was impermeable to protons. The researchers found that when graphene is illuminated with light, the electrons in the graphene become excited. These excited electrons then interact with protons, accelerating their transport through the material.

Concretene has announced three successful UK government funding bids, two through Innovate UK, totaling £1.18 million (around USD$1,430,000), and one through EPSRC and the Henry Royce Institute for Advanced Materials for £79,000 (about USD$95,000).

The product – a graphene-enhanced admixture for concrete that reduces embodied carbon – is being developed for commercial roll-out by Nationwide Engineering Research & Development and The University of Manchester. The grant awards relate to Concretene’s core research program, from raw material supply through to construction applications.

HydroGraph Clean Power, a manufacturer of graphene, has announced it is expanding its application development capabilities to meet growing global demand by establishing a partnership with the University of Manchester’s Graphene Engineering Innovation Center (GEIC) commencing in October of 2023. 

This strategic collaboration will aim to significantly enhance and ‘de-risk’ HydroGraph's application development capabilities. The GEIC, formed to commercialize graphene-related technologies and products, specializes in rapidly scaling up applications involving composites, building materials, membranes, inks, and coatings. To support their mission the £60 million GEIC facility was established with significant lab and engineering space that houses state-of-the-art testing and application development equipment, supported by experienced and knowledgeable team. Hydrograph will scale up this critical application development work by leveraging the resources at the GEIC with a team of commercially focused scientists and engineers to support industry adoption of its "99.8% pristine fractal graphene".

Researchers from The University of Warwick, the University of Manchester, Brazil's Universidade Federal do Ceara and Turkey's Izmir Institute of Technology have tackled the long-standing conundrum of why graphene is so much more permeable to protons than expected by theory. 

A decade ago, scientists at The University of Manchester demonstrated that graphene is permeable to protons, nuclei of hydrogen atoms. The unexpected result sparked a debate because theory predicted that it would be extremely hard for a proton to permeate through graphene's dense crystalline structure. This had led to suggestions that protons permeate not through the crystal lattice itself, but through the pinholes in its structure.

In April, First Graphene (FGR) announced plans for major graphene-enhanced cement trials with a consortium that includes Breedon Cement, Morgan Sindall and the University of Manchester. Now, FGR confirmed the beginning of these trials using the company’s graphene in cement and concrete at the Breedon Group’s Hope Cement Works at Derbyshire in the United Kingdom.

The trials aim to build on smaller-scale trials with an accredited concrete processing laboratory in the UK, which First Graphene said “generated positive results”, and to further showcase the carbon dioxide reduction benefits of graphene additives. According to the company, the trial – with Breedon, Morgan Sindall Construction and the University of Manchester – will use approximately 1.2 tonnes of PureGRAPH 50 and create about 2,000 tonnes of graphene-enhanced cement at the works.

An international team of researchers from the Max Plank Institute for Polymer Research of Mainz (Germany), the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2, Spain) and the University of Manchester (England) has found that water can interact directly with the carbon’s electrons: a quantum phenomenon that is very unusual in fluid dynamics.

A liquid, such as water, is made up of small molecules that randomly move and constantly collide with each other. A solid, in contrast, is made of neatly arranged atoms that are surrounded by a cloud of electrons. The solid and the liquid worlds are assumed to interact only through collisions of the liquid molecules with the solid’s atoms: the liquid molecules do not “see” the solid’s electrons. Nevertheless, just over a year ago, a theoretical study proposed that at the water-carbon interface, the liquid’s molecules and the solid’s electrons push and pull on each other, slowing down the liquid flow: this new effect was called quantum friction. However, the theoretical proposal lacked experimental verification.

Australia-based First Graphene (FGR) will be kicking off one of the world’s largest graphene-enhanced green cement trials, supported by the UK Government’s £66 million Transforming Foundation Industries (TFI) program. FGR is leading the consortium running the trial, which also involves Breedon Cement, Morgan Sindall and the University of Manchester.

Receiving significant funding from Innovate UK through a £190,034 grant, graphene will be added to the cement production line using a range of additions methods with minimal changes to the existing plant. A key aim of the trial is to find a simple, low-cost method of introducing graphene to
industrial scale cement production processes.

Researchers from the University of Manchester and University of Lancaster have exposed high-quality graphene to magnetic fields at room temperature and measured its response. 

"Over the last 10 years, electronic quality of graphene devices has improved dramatically, and everyone seems to focus on finding new phenomena at low, liquid-helium temperatures, ignoring what happens under ambient conditions," says materials scientist Alexey Berdyugin from the University of Manchester. "We decided to turn the heat up and unexpectedly a whole wealth of unexpected phenomena turned up."

A spin-out company from the graphene innovation ecosystem at The University of Manchester has formed an international partnership that will spearhead an unprecedented scale-up of graphene-based technologies intended “to make a substantial impact on global CO₂ emissions”.    

UK-based Graphene Innovations Manchester (GIM), founded by University graduate Dr Vivek Koncherry, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Quazar Investment Company to create a new company in the UAE. This UK-UAE partnership - which highlights potential opportunity for UK innovators to access global investment and international markets and supply chains - will be one of the most ambitious projects to date to commercialize graphene as it fast-tracks cutting-edge R&D into large-scale manufacture – an investment vision worth a total of $1billion.

Researchers from the University of Manchester in the UK, Wuhan University and Tsinghua University in China and Kansas State University in the U.S have found that nanoripples in graphene can make it a strong catalyst, contrary to predictions that the carbon sheet is as chemically inert as bulk graphite.  

Led by Professor Andre Geim from the National Graphene Institute (NGI), the researchers found that nanorippled graphene can accelerate hydrogen splitting as well as the best metallic-based catalysts. The findings were unexpected, as previous research predicted that graphene would be as chemically inert as the bulk graphite from which it is obtained. The effect is likely to be present in all two-dimensional materials, which inherently are all non-flat.