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Nixene Journal Volume 9 Issue 5 Article 21
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Vol 6 Issue 11
This month we performed our own analysis of the world-wide graphene research trends between 2004 and 2021. This examined the number of research papers produced by the academic community each year. We found that ‘peak graphene research’ occurred in 2018 with a maximum of over 300,000 scholarly articles produced in one year. That number has declined by about a third in the years leading up to 2021 and there are now around 100,000 articles produced by the global academic community each year. The trend charts in the special feature of this issue reveal what we found in more detail. It makes for fascinating reading and will give you an insight into how we curate each issue of this journal. The research we have highlighted this month includes work done by a team at Chongqing University, China who have discovered a way of improving the efficiency of the chemical vapour deposition (CVD) process for making graphene. By using a special catalyst, they can lower the furnace temperatures by 300°C. Other work by researchers at the University of Manchester, UK has found a potentially efficient way of splitting water into hydrogen gas using proton permeable graphene membranes. They can also measure the proton current moving across the graphene membrane. Understanding proton currents could help design better hydrogen fuel cells and even help design better ways of generating fuel for a future hydrogen economy. There are interesting developments on the industrial and commercial side this month. In Australia, the Graphene Manufacturing Group has done something with battery technology that we rarely see. They have made big improvements in energy density. This is a very hard thing to do with lithium-ion batteries. GMG has developed a new technology; graphene-aluminium-ion batteries and they are making continuous improvements, we are impressed. Another new technology caught our attention. First Graphene is helping develop a prototype module that can be retrofitted to natural gas boilers. The technology is graphene enabled, improves the efficiency by 20 to 30% and at the same time achieves 98-99% reduction in boiler emissions. This is at the prototype stage now. We wish the company well developing this technology. As usual dear reader, this is just the tip of the mountain, please explore the landscape we have curated for you this month by reading on… Adrian Nixon 1st November 2022£45.00 View product -
Vol 5 Issue 4
I need to start this month’s issue with a correction. In the last issue (Vol 5 iss 3 p.13) I stated that Kostya was moving from Singapore to Russia. Thanks to our rather well-informed readership, I have been told that Kostya is indeed taking up the position of head of the Brain and Consciousness Research Centre in Moscow, Russia. However, he is not leaving the National University of Singapore. Onward with our usual Accuracy, Brevity and Clarity. Normal ABC service resumes. This month we had a meeting with Prof. James Tour and the GEIC. Thanks Debbie. The work on Flash Graphene (FG) is advancing faster than we realised. Prof. Tour testified to Congress about the benefits graphene can bring to buildings and infrastructure in the USA. He testified to Congress in 2017 and now said “Four years later I’m here to report that the future has arrived” (see page 21). You will know that FG can be made from anything that contains carbon. Waste plastic is a favourite (Vol 4 iss 8 p.9). We learned that Flash Graphene can now also be made from furnace black, the by-product from the leading ‘green’ manufacturing process for Hydrogen (see page 22). The Rice University laboratories and spin out company, Universal Matter, are working on the production of Flash Graphene. The pace is fast. Every nine weeks doubles the scale at which FG can be made. Flash Graphene is something we’ll watch closely. If the team can continue to scale up the process it has the potential to make many other methods for making graphene powders obsolete. We have three special features this month. A review the state of the industry for manufacturing large scale sheet graphene, and interviews with two graphene company business leaders, Maví Figueres and Dylan Banks. Such is the pace of change, while we were writing the special feature, General Graphene sent samples of their monolayer and multilayer graphene to the International Space Elevator Consortium (ISEC). The samples will be sent to the International Space Station (ISS) for testing. We have the first pictures of these large-scale graphene samples in this issue (see page 29) It is worth noting that Graphene has gone from impossible to industrial in just 17 years. Astonishing. Other things to draw your attention to include an emerging controversy with graphene facemasks in Canada (see page 30) and new perovskite 2D materials start to feature in this issue. You’ll discover more as you read on. Adrian Nixon, 1st April 2021£45.00 View product -
Vol 5 Issue 5
It is not every month that a new allotrope of carbon is announced. The last time this happened was back in 2019 when researchers in the UK and Switzerland made a ring of 18 atoms called cyclocarbon (Vol3 iss9 p.12). This month a joint team in Germany and Finland have made a flat sheet of carbon atoms with 4 6 and 8 rings. They call this new material a biphenylene network (BPN). This new material seems to be exciting the researchers because it exhibits metallic character. It also opens the door to explore other potential allotropes of carbon. Graphene-metal composites also make another appearance this month. Two Indian organisations have been working on aluminium-graphene composites (Al-G). Tirupati graphite says it has made an Al-G composite that has 95% the electrical conductivity of copper with the light weight of aluminium (although no has been presented yet). The Maharaja Agrasen University has published a peer reviewed paper showing that 1% graphene powder produced a 67% increase in the ultimate strength of the aluminium composite. A joint team in the Netherlands and Germany has made a Pirani pressure sensor from multilayer CVD graphene. It is not only 100 times smaller than the state-of-the-art sensors; it consumes a fraction of the power and is so sensitive it can detect different gas molecules. Aerospace and automotive applications abound. A new car company, Viritech, has announced it is building an electric supercar with a range of 800km and a top speed in excess of 300km/hr. The company has rejected batteries in favour of a hydrogen fuel cell to generate the electricity. The hydrogen storage tank is made from graphene enhanced carbon fibre and is an integral part of the chassis. Production is due to start in 2023. Graphene enhanced concrete made the headlines this month. British construction company Nationwide Engineering and the University of Manchester’s Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre (GEIC) have created graphene enhanced concrete for the whole floor of a new building in Amesbury, UK. As well as being a practical success in CO2 reduction the use of graphene has reduced the quantity of materials involved by 30% and potentially cut the costs between 10 and 20%. This will catch on. Adrian Nixon, 1st June 2021£45.00 View product -
Vol 5 Issue 1
In a previous life I led the market intelligence gathering and analysis for a large international company. I discovered that a good way to find out what the competition and customer organisations would do in the future was to look at the influence the corporate leader had on his or her company. Two new top appointments have been announced this month. First Graphene has a new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) with sales, marketing and growth expertise. Zen has a new CEO and also a Chairman, with skills acquired in financial management and investor relations. It will be interesting to observe the corporate behaviour of these two companies over the coming years. If the skills set of the leadership is a guide then we can expect that by this time next year First Graphene will generate its income from increased sales in diverse markets through organic growth and Zen will have raised more money from a variety of institutional sources focussed on their anti-viral graphene. We’ll watch both companies with interest. Graphene is still throwing up surprises in fundamental science: Andre Geim’s team at the University of Manchester continues to create high quality research. The latest paper in nature explores the way water condenses to a liquid from a vapour inside nanocapillaries made in two dimensional materials. The team showed that as the humidity rises to 80% water suddenly condenses out as a liquid and fills the nanocapillaries. This work may also mean that other graphene surfaces could be affected in a similar way by high levels of humidity suddenly transitioning to a liquid coating. Designers of graphene sensors for the internet of things may want to bear this in mind. A team at Princeton University in the USA has been exploring the source of superconductivity in twisted bilayer graphene. They found topological quantum states were created by the magic angle twist which forces the electrons to be at the same energy (a flat band). This creates regions that have electrically insulating interiors but the edges allow electrons to flow freely even if there are imperfections present in the material. At low temperatures and mild magnetic fields, the edges form stable superconducting channels throughout the material. These topological quantum states were a surprise discovery and will keep researchers busy for some time to come. And another team in China has created a new method for making graphene from waste plastic using microwave sintering. This shows that graphene will spontaneously form when carbon atoms are ripped apart and allowed to reform in the absence of oxygen. It looks like we will not run out of graphene supplies any time soon. Further fascination can be found in Rob Whieldon’s special feature. Rob has analysed the market keywords we use to tag all the applications of graphene since we started in 2017. His feature is a must-read in this issue. Adrian Nixon, 4th January 2021£45.00 View product
