Lower production costs are boosting the use of nanomaterials in packaging and textiles. Nanominerals can improve food conservation while nanocoatings block microbial contamination of textiles. Exploiting the full potential of nanotechnology, however, remains a key challenge.
A University of Manchester partnership is launching a revolutionary world-first in the sports footwear market following a unique collaboration with graphene experts. British sportswear brand inov-8 has teamed up with The University of Manchester to become the first-ever company to incorporate graphene into running and fitness shoes.
Researchers at the University of Washington have published a paper on 3D printed wireless sensors capable of operating not only without batteries but without electronics of any kind, yet still capable of providing useful data to nearby Wi-Fi-based receivers.
ICN2 researchers have demonstrated that the application of a thermal gradient in spintronic devices can cause spin signal to increase as a result of a novel thermoelectric phenomenon predicted and subsequently observed in graphene. Specifically, the enhanced spin signal is two orders of magnitude larger than anything previously reported for thermal effects in metals. Published in Nature Nanotechnology, these findings push at the frontier of graphene spintronics technologies.
Experimentalists of the ICN2 Physics and Engineering of Nanodevices Group, led by ICREA Prof. Sergio O. Valenzuela, have found evidence that the spin-orbit coupling induced in graphene by proximity to transition metal dichalcogenides affects electron spins differently depending on their orientation. Published in Nature Physics, this work suggests new approaches to controlling the transport of spin and valley information in future spintronics devices.
In this study, the authors report a novel strategy to prepare graphene nanopapers from direct vacuum filtration. Instead of the conventional method, i.e., thermal annealing nanopapers at extremely high temperatures prepared from graphene oxide (GO) or partially reduced GO, they fabricate our graphene nanopapers directly from suspensions of fully reduced graphene oxide (RGO), obtained after RGO and thermal annealing at 1700 °C in vacuum. By using this approach, they studied the effect of thermal annealing on the physical properties of the macroscopic graphene-based papers. Indeed, they demonstrated that the enhancement of the thermal and electrical properties of graphene nanopapers prepared from annealed RGO is strongly influenced by the absence of oxygen functionalities and the morphology of the nanoflakes. Hence, the methodology reported can be considered as a valid alternative to the classical approach.
This paper presents a comprehensive study to evaluate the influence of graphene oxide (GO) concentration on the physiochemical and mechanical properties of cement mortar composites. Scanning electron micrographs (SEM), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), X-ray diffraction (XRD), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) characterizations were performed to understand the correlation between physicochemical and observed axial tension and compression properties of GO–cement mortar composites. The results show considerable concentration dependence, with the optimum concentration of 0.1% GO that increases the tensile and compressive strength of the composite by 37.5% and 77.7%, respectively. These results are explained by the stronger bonding of calcium silicate hydrate (C–S–H) components in the cement matrix in the presence of GO sheets and the dependence of their dispersions and possible aggregation.