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Nixene Journal Volume 9 Issue 5 Article 26
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Vol 6 Issue 10
Dear reader, you will know that we are tracking the progress of the biggest graphene companies in the world. Levidian is the biggest on paper with their announced £700 million ($780 m USD) contract with the UAE (vol 6 iss 6 p.26). The other company is Skeleton Technologies who make graphene enhanced supercapacitors for transport systems. They have been making steady progress over the past few years and have now announced a new €220 million ($215 m USD) super factory that will open in Germany in 2024. This will give the company an order of magnitude increase in production capacity (p.32 of this issue). Skeleton have also announced they have been awarded the contract to supply supercapacitors for the latest metro units in the Spanish city of Grenada (p.22). Further industrial progress is being made in the USA. Cardea Bio is a manufacturer of graphene field effect transistor biosensors. Essentially these are lab-on-a-chip devices that will give an instant read out of medical conditions from a sample of body fluids. The company has mastered the art of mass production and its factories can produce up to 20,000 graphene sensors per month. They also report that next year they will have produced their millionth biosensor. This company is shaping up to be a formidable presence in the graphene biosensor market. On the research and technical side, there has been much progress in the quality control of graphene. Terrance Barkan convened a webinar of metrology experts from world class institutions in the UK, USA and South America. The Raman spectroscopy masterclass is well worth viewing if you need to understand how the quality of graphene is measured by this technique and its limitations (p.15). By coincidence this month researchers in India have developed a new technique for reliably measuring the number of layers of graphene in a sample. Rather than use an expensive raman spectrometer, they have found a much cheaper optical microscope can provide similar information (p.17). In the UK, researchers have published a literature review of sustainable fibres for polymer composites. The work clearly shows why sustainable natural fibres are not being adopted to replace synthetic fibres. Natural fibres are an order of magnitude weaker than their synthetic counterparts. There is room for optimism though. The study shows that graphene can enhance the strength of natural fibres in polymer composites and shows there is one primary candidate natural fibre that, with graphene, just might challenge the supremacy of synthetic fibres (p.18). You can find out about this and much more in this fascinating issue. Dear reader, I invite you to read on… Adrian Nixon 1st October 2022£45.00 View product -
Vol 6 Issue 2
A graphene toaster was demonstrated for the first time at the consumer electronics show in Las Vegas by Korean company Graphene Square. This may not sound like a world changing invention, but it is something worth paying attention to because this is a rare application for chemical vapour deposition (CVD) graphene in a consumer electronics device. Until now, CVD graphene has been used in very small pieces in sensors. This toaster has a piece of CVD graphene on the top and bottom glass panels making a transparent infrared grill. The graphene is made at a scale of 200mm x 150mm and this tells us a that the company has a viable CVD roll to roll process. The process can make graphene at this scale and also provides the capability to separate the graphene from the forming substrate to other surfaces, in this case glass. The next step is to do this commercially. Graphene Square admits this is still at least a year away. This is still impressive progress and tells us that the industrial manufacture of CVD graphene is developing quickly. CVD graphene is also in the news this month. British company Paragraf announced through Queen Mary University, London, that they can create graphene at wafer scale, and this could be a replacement for indium tin oxide (ITO). This was picked up by technology blogs around the world, and graphene manufacturer Versarien felt obliged to disclose it is working on a similar project with a graphene manufacturer in Korea. These announcements about CVD graphene touchscreens sound impressive. However, as far as we can tell from the current state of the art, the economic and technical cases are not sufficiently proven to convince us we will see this technology in the immediate future. The term ‘bottom-up graphene’ used to refer to CVD graphene assembled atom by atom. Graphene powder manufacturing has been evolving rapidly over the last few years and can now be made by atomic assembly methods too. We have summarised the various methods in our special feature. We also look at the implications for competitive activity, as these new manufacturing methods meet the new market dynamics driving the sustainability agenda. While we cannot state which individual companies will achieve success, we can make some predictions about the characteristics successful graphene powder manufacturers will need to have. We hope you agree this makes for fascinating reading along with the rest of the compelling content this issue. Adrian Nixon, 1st February 2022£45.00 View product -
Vol 6 Issue 4
We begin this month with a review of a new book by James Baker and James Tallentire – “Graphene: The Route to Commercialisation.” This book will be released later this month and well worth a read. It is part history of the graphene story and part how-to-guide to create a sustainable innovation ecosystem for new advanced materials. Graphene composites are making the news. The graphene-asphalt road trials in the UK have produced successful results. Oxfordshire County Council reports that graphene-enhanced asphalt improves the life of the road surface by 70%, and graphene enhances the stiffness of the surface, making it less prone to rutting. Another trial is underway on a 700m stretch of road with heavier traffic to see if similar benefits are reported. Korea is experimenting with graphene-metal composites to build new power lines for its electricity grid. The national power company announced a research project to enhance the power transmission capacity of the country’s energy distribution network. On a smaller scale, researchers in the USA are using graphene oxide scaffolds to create new bone using stem cells. Graphene oxide has been making more appearances on social media. Reuters felt compelled to investigate claims that graphene oxide was being put into ibuprofen tablets. Their conclusion was that these are false claims. Elsewhere, rather serious accusations are starting to emerge about one of Canada’s biggest graphene companies. Zentek (previously Zen Graphene Solutions) has been accused of unethical business practises. Prof. Rodney Ruoff’s group in Korea have been working with teams in Saudi Arabia and China to make large area single-crystal graphene. They used the chemical vapour deposition (CVD) process but allowed graphene to diffuse into the copper metal close to its melting point. This grew the graphene at the interface between the metal and a sapphire substrate. They added another clever step by diffusing nitrogen into the copper then rapidly heating the sample. This caused the nitrogen to expand, blowing off the copper, leaving the graphene exposed and undamaged. We can expect the team to speed up and scale up the process over the coming years. This team is one to watch. There are many more things to watch out for in this issue, dear reader. I will delay you no longer and let you dive into this month’s carefully curated content… Adrian Nixon, 1st April 2022£45.00 View product -
Vol 7 Issue 1
Batteries feature several times in this issue of the journal. Dear Reader, you will know that energy density is the key performance metric we watch. The higher the energy density (Wh/kg) the further you can travel on a battery charge. Current lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries have an energy density around 260Wh/kg. We have highlighted the work of a company developing lithium-sulphur technology (Li-S) vol 5 iss 12 p.35. They have claimed energy densities over three times that of current Li-ion batteries using graphene enhanced cell designs. You will probably guess that we have been following this company and contacted them multiple times. We have yet to see data to back up these extraordinary claims. It was with interest that we found an online discussion between battery experts, the consensus view is that Li-S technology can create higher energy densities than Li-ion. However, this comes at a cost of reduced battery life. Perhaps this is the reason we have yet to see data backing up the claims for Li-S technology. Then NASA announced they have been working on a new graphene enhanced battery technology. The graphene is used as the structure for a sulphur/selenium cathode and is based on holey graphene that NASA developed in 2017. A solid-state electrolyte separates the anode from a lithium metal anode. The interim results are promising. They have achieved an energy density of 500Wh/kg. The battery seems to be safer too. It resists impact damage and has a maximum operating temperature of 150°C. NASA anticipates this solid-state battery will start to become available within three to five years. Elsewhere in this issue we report on developments as diverse as graphene enhanced condoms in India to graphene enhanced polymers launched on a SpaceX rocket bound for the moon. There is so much more in between these two very different applications, I encourage you to read on… Adrian Nixon 1st January 2023£45.00 View product
